Showing posts with label CSA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CSA. Show all posts

Friday, May 31, 2013

delayed CSA start

I spoke too soon.

As difficult as it is to believe with this ridiculously hot weather, we've actually had a pretty cool/damp spring, with frost warnings in the Free Bird Farm area as late as last weekend, according to our lovely farmers. Since everything's growing a little behind schedule, our CSA has decided to push back the distribution by a week. I recall seeing something similar at the Madison farmer's market. Other than piles and piles of asparagus and morel mushrooms (apparently this is a very good year for morels), there was noticeably less variety than I would expect in farmer's market this close to June.

Of course, I'd love to see produce next week, but one week delay isn't a big deal. I just hope we don't run into drought or flood issues this season!

Thursday, March 14, 2013

2013 CSA Season

I signed up last night! I know, I know. It's already mid-March. Hey, at least I eventually got around to doing it right?

I signed up for a partial vegetable share, a poultry share, and a farm visit. I'll be splitting part of the vegetables and poultry with my friend and roommate. I plan on eating the bulk of the produce and I'll be doing the volunteer shift and picking up the produce, which is perfectly fine with me if it means more people are exploring the CSA experience. The whole concept of a CSA is fantastic, but I honestly don't think it's for everyone. I would rather see someone have a fulfilling CSA experience by piggybacking and "just trying it out" instead of seeing a dissatisfied customer walk out of a CSA from a clash in expectations and what can sometimes be an overwhelming amount of produce (remember the deathbylettuce episode last summer?)

I'd like to get more involved in my CSA this summer, but I'm not quite sure how. Perhaps I'll email Cara and see if there's something I can do to help out the team.

Also, I've been doing a lot of reading and research on topics like sustainable agriculture, small to mid-size family farms in the U.S., programs that focus on supporting agriculture, soil enrichment and care, methane pollution (especially from dairy farms), monoculture crops, permaculture, biodiversity, conservation of the environment, fertilizer runoff, pesticide/hormone/antibiotic use, the involvement of government and large corporations in next-step R&D, technology in agriculture, the trend towards local eating, and American attitudes towards food and the consumption/production of food. It has been fascinating to see the different opinions and views people have across the country in regards to all of these topics. I don't know that anyone is wrong, exactly, but there'a lot of people who see the world through opposite lens, and that is making the discussion of America's food supply awfully polarizing.

I brought up the whole idea of local, sustainable agriculture to my dad last night and my goodness. I realized we see it completely differently. He's an engineering professor and believes wholeheartedly in scale and efficiency. For him, concepts like organic or local sound warm and fuzzy and make people happy. But it's only a matter of time before it scales into mass production, which is the most sensible and cost-effective way to feed people. My dad is not at all a romantic idealist and believes very much in the pragmatic, the quantifiable, and the efficiency of science and research.

I inherited my practical side from dad, no doubt about it. But between my day to day job, which affords me the opportunity to examine myriad businesses and their structures and modus operandi; my years in college; and my experience as a young consumer living in New York (one of the most food forward environments I've come across)...

I see a very different picture. While I do not believe that small family farms are the ONLY solution to feeding America, I do think they should play an important role in the food ecosytem. There's nothing wrong with having multiple ways of growing, processing, and distributing food to Americans. What I do believe is that the ecosystem has room for improvement. I do believe that America should pay closer attention to how it eats and where its food comes from. I do believe that consumers, farms, conservationists, shareholders/investors, corporations, and restaurants all have different responsibilities to each other. And I do think we all need to do our part to ensure we have a competitive, cooperative, secure, and healthy food ecosystem in the U.S.

The part of this equation I'm most interested in right now is increasing awareness of and advocating for programs like CSA's, farm-to-table, sustainable agriculture, and paying closer attention to what we put in our bodies. So in my own way, I try to do my part. I educate myself and do my own research, I spread the word, I sign up for a CSA, and I continue to look for ways to help balance the equation. I've helped introduce the concept of a CSA to a few of my friends and I'm fully prepared to hold their hand through their first season with a CSA to ensure they have a wonderful and enjoyable experience. It may not be much, but I like to think every drop in the bucket counts.

More than anything, I think awareness is key. As we were signing up for a share last night, my roommate turned to me and said, "You know, they should market this better. I never heard of this until I saw you with your shares and neither did my friends until you told them about it." The inherent problem with a local CSA is that it's local and it's small. Marketing is obviously going to be less polished than a company like Whole Foods or Gristedes. CSA's rely more on word of mouth from farmers' markets and happy customers than anything else. Feeding America cannot be solved through a one-size-fits-all approach and I think people should be free to decide what they want to eat when they want to eat it. Having said that, I do think people cannot be expected to make a good decision if they are uninformed or can't see all the pieces of the puzzle (or don't even have all the puzzle pieces to begin with!) If we educate people, market various approaches to eating, help adjust attitudes towards food, I rather suspect interest in CSA's would skyrocket.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

FRIENDS! and chickens and eggs

I can now claim to have convinced not one, but TWO people to sign up for a CSA because of me! One in California and one here in New York. I am so pleased, I'm grinning like a Cheshire cat.

I'm worried, of course, that they won't like it. That I've been hyping it up to everyone. But honestly, I'll just let the produce do the talking, and I'm sure it'll be fine.

I was hoping to pull my roommate into sharing my CSA with me this year, but it looks like my roommate may or may not be with us this summer. So...I've decided that instead of being overly ambitious, I'm going to sign up for just one partial share ($375 for 22 weeks of a larger-than-half-of-a-regular-share) of vegetables. I wanted to try the eggs, fruit, or chicken because it looks so good and I want to support Free Bird Farms. But I didn't know what the best option would be and I was scared being overwhelmed by Foodmageddon again.

I can polish off fruit quite happily and easily on my own, but I like the idea of free range, organic (not certified, but raised organically) chickens and eggs, and I wanted to give it a go at home, rather than relying on super duper expensive fancy places that I like to think about eating at because heaven knows I'd never be able to take myself there without feeling awfully guilty about how I'm prioritizing my spending. T_T

I digress. I ended up deciding on the chicken share. Why? Eggs are perishable but these chickens are frozen. Plus, they seemed like a slightly better deal. $90 for a dozen eggs a week comes out to a whopping $4.09 per dozen eggs. That's a lot and I am not quite sure the difference in taste and quality would be worth it. I snooped around and the prices for free range, organic eggs are anywhere from $3.50 to $5.50 per dozen in NYC. Regular eggs are $$2.00 - $3.00 a dozen. While it would be nice to have eggs with beautiful, rich, nutritious orange yolks, I just don't want to commit to a full season right now. I guess the humane treatment of chickens is another factor, but on this point, I'm indifferent, since chickens raised for meat also face the same issue of humane treatment. The deciding factor for me was just that I don't eat a lot of eggs to begin with and they are fairly perishable.

On the other hand, I can get 12 chickens for $180, which comes out to about $15 a chicken, or $3.75 a pound. Although pricey, I did some investigating online and in stores, and this is actually fairly reasonable for a free-range, organic chicken. Normal chickens go for a lot less - something like $4 to $8 per whole 4lb chicken. The price markup for free range and organic chicken is a lot higher than it is for eggs. Why do I bother buying free range and organic then? It freaks me out that I'm eating chicken meat laced with antibiotics and hormones. I don't know. I don't like it. Plus, I've seen the chickens being raised for meat and eggs at Free Bird Farm and I can definitively say these chickens were raised happily. I can't say the same for the chickens I buy at the store, free range and organic or not. Finally, chickens can be frozen. They will keep for up to a year in my freezer. This gives them a significant advantage over eggs.

And I know $15 per chicken is a lot, but I know how to stretch my chickens. I can easily, easily, make at least 5 or 6 meals out of one chicken. Roast chicken for two meals with a side of veg, chicken over rice or chicken with pasta or even chicken salad sandwiches can make another two meals, and the leftover chicken bits and bones makes for at least two meals of chicken soup. I can add noodles, rice, or potatoes to the soup to instantly make it more filling. The price breakdown comes to about $2 to $3 per meal for the chicken. Rice, vegetables, noodles, potatoes, and pasta are super cheap, so the total cost of a full meal would break down to less than $5. That's a price I'm willing to live with, especially since I don't actually eat meat that much anymore, meaning my other meals are much cheaper than that. And I can rest easy, knowing what I'm putting into my body, how the chickens were raised, and who I'm supporting with my $. This makes me happy.

*Caveat: I don't know how "green" or local my chicken is, since I presume Free Bird Farm had to take the birds to be processed and frozen at a butcher plant, and I have no idea how far away that plant is, but I'm okay with that. This is a better option to me than what I can find in my supermarkets.

Why didn't I opt for both chickens and eggs? Quite simply: I can't eat that much. I think it's better to buy only what you need than to oversupply and waste food. Less food, more quality. In fact, I think 12 chickens is more than I can handle, so I convinced my friend to share some of the chickens with me. In exchange for buying 3-6 chickens off of me, I've agreed to teach him how to cook the chickens and pass along any excess produce, which I'm more than happy to do. Community building with CSA food! :)

All this thinking about local, organic, free-range, etc. made me wonder about all the other food I eat. I want to live better and I am considering kicking off a month of clean eating, where I restrict myself to only eating sustainably produced/harvested food, with an emphasis on organic produce, free range and hormone/antibiotic free meats, and wild-caught fish. And, of course, trying to support local farmers where and when I can.

Surprisingly, there are a lot of restaurants and grocery stores that are quietly (or not so quietly) sourcing local, free-range, sustainable foods. I think it would be fairly easy to pull off a month of clean eating in the city. I'll chew on this idea a little longer, but it's definitely something I want to pursue.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Vegetables 1, Haters 0

Chefs Put Down Roots (WSJ)
I can't decide if this is awesome or Division of Labor gone all wrong. Whatever! Farms be gettin some press and people are becoming more thoughtful about what they eat and how their food gets to their tables. And that is definitely awesome :)

Also, my roommate (teasingly, I hope) told me yesterday that the reason I don't have a boyfriend is probably because I post photos not of me, not of cool places that are like-worthy, but of vegetables. And hitchhikers in my share (I don't think he was pleased by the appearance of our little earthworm friend this week).

He might be right (he really probably is right). But one of my friends in California just messaged me and told me that after seeing all my photos of vegetables, she got curious about what exactly a "CSA" is. She looked it up and decided it was a great idea and is now looking into some near her area. WIN!!! This alone makes all the effort of advocating for more food awareness and talking up CSA's and posting photos of veggies completely worth it. I might be a loser, but hey. At least I'm proud of what I like. No shame.

I should note that this ability to stand up for what I like is a skill that has been a long time in development, as I tend to have questionable taste in music. A lot of good natured ribbing about my love for TSwiftie, Tristan Prettyman, kpop, straight up sugar pop, and country and all the other hated-on genres of music that everyone loves to hate and secretly listens to in the privacy of their earbuds has led to some pretty thick skin :)

So there. Take that all you haters. Today is a vegetable win day!

P.S. I'm doing some serious damage on this lettuce. And the purple beans were fun to eat :)

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Evolution of the CSA?

Huh. Interesting.

I'm a huge fan of local and sustainable food efforts, which is a big part of why I signed up for a CSA in the first place, but this is taking it to a whole new level. I like.

I can see this "pay someone to garden your plot" idea being especially helpful for restaurants.

Brief excerpt:

In Lincolnshire, another farm has, since January, been taking provenance to extremes online. At i-Grow, Harry Loweth, 26, who farms with his family at Abbey Parks Farm near East Heckington, had the riveting idea of dividing ground into six-metre-square allotments for hands-off vegetable-growers.

From £125 a year, clean-fingered customers choose their vegetables or herbs and Harry will then grow them organically, harvest them and even deliver them to their door.

“It appeals to time-poor city-dwellers with no gardens, to schools who want to teach children where their food comes from, to restaurant chefs who want a reliable supply and to senior gardeners who can’t manage anymore,” he says.

“They’re not a virtual concept, they’re real and so far, we’ve sold 42 plots. You can even arrange to come and visit or you can watch how your crops are performing on the website.”

Source: Food Provenance (Telegraph)


And another (equally as interesting) article with more detail on Harry Loweth's farm + other creative ventures from UK farmers:

The Trend: Click Your Own (FT)

Thursday, September 13, 2012

CSA's at work + WSJ article!

!!! The WSJ posted an article on CSA's at the workplace!

Workplace CSA's in NYC

Love the article, wish my company would start up an initiative like this. I bet there would be a lot of interest. You know what would be even better? Being able to allocate a certain portion of Seamless dollars or health care benefits towards a share.

I like the whole idea of divvying up shares on the spot. Definitely understand the dilemmas faced by the share-splitters (for example, how exactly do you split a watermelon three ways?)

I split a share with a friend at the moment, but I pick up the share and she picks up her half from me later that evening. The problem is, I'm still at the office when she picks it up, so things like lettuce heads or 1 eggplant or 1 large onion become a bit difficult to split. And I don't exactly feel like carting in a large kitchen knife every Tuesday to my office. I feel like that would draw less than positive attention my way.

In any case, I hope awareness of CSA's continues to grow and I hope companies realize that this is a great, effective, and cheap way to keep workers happy and healthy :)