Community Sponsored Agriculture

This year our family did something I wish we would have done when we moved to Poughkeepsie the previous year: we joined a CSA. For those unfamiliar with the term, CSA stands for Community Sponsored Agriculture. CSAs vary, but they all have some things in common. Generally, you pay a fee for the season and pick up some fresh local vegetables every week or so. As far as I can gather that seems like the one thing they all have in common. From there they can vary a bit. But this one feature brings a lot of great benefits that are relevant to the mission of this blog. I will start with those then talk a bit about some of the great things I get from my particular CSA The Poughkeepsie Farm Project, which in my opinion is a very good one.

The most obvious advantage of a CSA is that it provides you with produce that is locally grown and therefore also in season, as opposed to something that is not in season and shipped half way across the country, or farther. This reduces your carbon footprint and makes you less dependent on the industrial food system. It also supports an alternative local food source and the people working to grow it.

Of course my reasons for joining a CSA are not entirely altruistic. I get a lot of great things from my membership. The produce I pick up every week is a lot fresher than what I can buy at even the best supermarkets. So it tastes a lot better and lasts longer. I also get exposed to vegetables I have never tasted and in some cases never knew existed. Sometimes these are entirely unfamiliar vegetables, other times they are different varieties of a common vegetable. Still, other times it means eating a part of a plant that simply does not make it to most grocery stores for various reasons (garlic scapes are a good example). Exploring new foods puts you out of your comfort zone and will introduce you to new recipes. This can really help you change things up if you find yourself in a rut cooking the same meals every week.

In the context of this blog CSAs do something else great: they get you used to eating what is local and in season. For many americans this presents a challenge. The typical US supermarket has no seasons and you can get pretty much any fruit or vegetable you want year round. This seems like a good idea at first, but when you actually taste a lot of the produce out of season it simply does not satisfy. For example, I have no desire to eat a tomato outside of tomato season and will simply pick up canned tomatoes for a recipe if I need them out of season. Most supermarket tomatoes are picked while they are still green and ripened using ethylene gas, so they don't taste very good. The greenhouse tomatoes they sell are a little better, but still nowhere near as good as one of the tomatoes that comes out of my garden or CSA between August and early October.

Some research shows that our bodies do better eating fruits and vegetables in their proper season. This might explain why I crave salads more in in the summer and roasted potatoes more in the winter. It also makes sense to get used to eating produce in season now, because shipping some agricultural products long distances might become prohibitively expensive in the future.

I feel very lucky that my particular CSA has some great features. It offers working shares which give you a discount on your membership if you volunteer some of your time. I like this because I get to meet other CSA members who generally have common interests. They give the option of several kinds of jobs to fulfill a work requirement, but I always choose some kind of field work because this allows me to learn more about growing food from the farm staff.

My CSA also lets members pick some of their own vegetables. This saves the staff some work and again puts me out in the field where I can see the source of my food. I often will take my two year old son who loves to help pick (and eat) beans, tomatoes, and berries. This provides a great learning opportunity for him. I also learn a lot. While picking okra this summer, a vegetable I don't have a lot of experience with, an Indian woman and an African-American woman from New Orleans showed me how to avoid picking pods that had become too tough (if the tip bends they are good). In general, the CSA attracts people from many cultures who appreciate good produce.

The opportunity to pick my own vegetable also works out very well because it allows me stock up. One week I might be allowed to pick a pint or a quart of something. But during the peak of the growing season I might be encouraged to take as much of a vegetable as I can carry home. I took advantage of this by picking a shopping bag full of green beans, blanching them, and storing them in the freezer for the winter. This will come in handy because the only drawback of my CSA is that, like the growing season for most crops in my area, it is not year round. Eventually I would like to have season extenders at home that will allow me to grow greens in the winter. But for now I'm back to going to my local grocery store and looking forward to when my CSA starts up again in the spring.

I hope you will look into the CSAs in your area and consider joining. I'm very happy with mine.

A note on my absence:  I have neglected this blog for a while due to Theo's irregular nap schedule, other obligations, and poor time management on my part. I hope to keep posting regularly (at least monthly). I'm also very happy to announce that we are expecting a baby girl around the new year. We plan on having a home birth and I will write a bit about the experience. If you don't want to miss a post please subscribe. Thanks.