Does anyone else here have local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)?

My daughter in MA, a devout locavore, has joined one to receive "shares" in the farm's harvests. This winter she got root vegetables but over the summer and fall she had a great bounty of a huge variety of fresh vegetables. The two women who ran the farm also raised pigs and we had bacon.

We had some lovely soups here over Thanksgiving and even Christmas. This is a great thing. I hope everybody has them.

but the waiting list for shares is loooong....

missed the cutoff for renewing last year's membership :/

The monthly amount that one must buy into is far too much for a single person, and I can't afford to buy that much a month and give the rest away. I wish they would sell half shares or quarter shares. I haven't found anyone who wanted to go in on it near me.

Maybe you should ask them about it?

I'll have to check and see if they changed the policy. I think it's a pretty recent program around here.

A quarter share would have been perfect. Our CSA also runs a farm stand. It would have been more economical for us to have just purchased what we wanted at their stand which is what we'll do next year. Of course, when the food chain completely breaks down I'll wish I was still a share holder. ;)

and with limited operating hours, so it's just not that convenient.

I am trying to grow my own veggies. Last summer wasn't so successful. I hope I'll do better this time. :)

It ended up being two tomato plants, a pumpkin & some herbs, all in pots. The pumpkin was a lovely plant, but I think because it was in a pot, it was somewhat stunted. We got one fruit about the size of a grapefruit. :o I'm going to try again this year. ;)

I watched the movie "King Corn" a few weeks ago - a great documentary about big agri & our food industry, all based on corn. There is an aerial shot of these huge homesteads in Iowa, acres & acres of land. They tell how each farm had plotted off a decent section of land from the cash crop, for the family to grow their own food. Now that big agri owns it all, the dominant crop is corn & the houses & buildings are being dozed because they are obstacles to industrial farming. My local Blockbuster had it. If you get a chance, I highly recommend it! It has inspired the gardener in me! ;)

:hi:

I plan to ask again. :)

I think we split it 1 : 1 : 2 between 2 single people and a couple. I haven't looked into it recently but I should. As a single person, it was hard for me to use the quantities of particular items some weeks. Other weeks were dominated by vegetables I can't eat so I ended up leaving them in the free/extras box at the pickup site. While I support the CSA spirit, it seemed crazy to be paying for food I would never eat.

But I should look into it here - I know they're around.

I am rather picky with veggies, but I am trying to expand my veggie horizons. I wouldn't mind just leaving stuff as freebies for others if I had money to burn. But right now, I am counting down the days until I get my last paycheck. I have to make every penny count for now.

mainly greens. I spoke to them about it & they said that besides variety, they try to plant veggies that have the most nutritional bang for the buck. That's fine, but more than a few times, my share was mostly collard, kale & some other type of greens. x( I will definitely support the farm this year, but it will be via their farm stand & not shares. And I'm going to try to grow more of my own veggies this year. After backyard tomatoes you can hardly stand to eat store bought ones!

Years ago, two men that worked in my department were having a "best tomato" contest. One claimed that his tomatoes were watered with clear lake water & the other claimed that his tomatoes were grown in the richest soil. All summer they brought in tomatoes for us to eat & critique!

the "support your local farmers" and organic products types. The wife and I considered joining but we knew we would o.d. on the same veggies over and over when they're in season. So, we just go to the farmers' markets and buy from the same farmers who are members of CSA.

It seems like a great program but I don't know how much it helps the local farmers.

They are private in the sense that they have been deeded over to a local farmer. So the land must be used for people who will farm the land and not squander it....

But we have wonderful Farmer's Markets almost every day in Marin.

*hic*

I have a whole list of family farms I support, and I get my meat pretty much entirely from a local butcher that only does local small farms (3rd generation farm and butchering family). They have the *best* bacon I've ever had in my life.

We do have a CSA, but I'm thinking of going solo this next summer. The amount and variety were really off this year, as was the quality. There are four farmer's markets in a half hour radius, so I'll probably do that this year instead. Not to mention all the farmstands, local farms I buy from, and orchards I get my apples from (apples are an obsession of mine).

www.localharvest.org

Thanks for making me aware of this.

a share. Also, land isn't the greatest around here either; it's hard to come by fresh veggies and fruits like in some parts of the country.

It should not be this way. ALL people should benefit from CSA. I would like toknow how this can be accomplished?

I understand that when you join a CSA, you are in a sense "subsidizing" the farmer, or in some cases a group of farmers, for that year. So your shares are a share of the harvest...or the crop failure, if things don't work out so well.

For someone like me on a fixed income, there is simply no big chunk of money lying around that we can put down upfront for a share in a CSA. We have to pay as we go. The great thing about a buying club is that we never have to make that initial large investment.

We pay for each share a few days before the pickup date, so the club gets the wholesale price because we're buying in bulk. Some of the produce comes from local farms (which we prefer) or from an organic wholesaler in downtown L.A. Since it's winter now, we are getting more of it from the wholesaler and not so much from the local farms. Even in California, it's impossible to get vine-ripened local tomatoes in December! We still get them, but they come from Mexico via the wholesaler.

Here's a picture of my most recent share:
http://www.meetup.com/organicproduce/photos/503966/6693516/

Pretty inspiring, huh? Many people with more mouths to feed get a comparable share every week--it varies from week to week, of course. Since I'm only one person, I normally try to pick up every other week. For the past few months I've been even more broke than usual, so I find myself going longer than that between shares. It hasn't been so much a matter of not having the money, but of not having it (or not knowing I would have it) by the deadline for ordering.

But yeah...if it's paid for from week to week and not upfront in a lump sum, it's quite do-able and even practical for low-income people. And it's NOT an extravagance--I end up paying less for organic produce than I'd pay for conventional produce at the supermarket.

to get and when we'll be too busy for me to use it all up. So far, the variety had been very good and the locations are very convenient. Not a CSA, but it's better than nothing.

I checked into the CSAs and there's a waiting list plus you do pay up front.

It was started by a cool chick years ago. She went around to the owners of vacant lots and asked them if she could garden. Pretty soon she had lots of locals who would come and work the gardens and everyone shared. She then started growing baby lettuces for the local chefs and sold it for $12 a pound (trimmed and cleaned, of course) to help support the movement. She called it "a well-paying hobby."

Delivers the "happy box" once a week. Great stuff - just look out when it's tomato/cucumber/pepper season!

Our nieghborhood owns five acres of land in downtown Atlanta.About half is devoted to vegetable gardens.We also raise chickens for eggs.About half of the garden plots are "open" plots where anyone can plant and anyone can harvest.
The rest are private plots with harvast rights up to who plants it.