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.

Choosing a CSA

Exciting news: I just received an email informing me that Turtle Bay CSA received my check. I officially have one vegetable share reserved under my name! After listlessly poking through my dinner (a dismal mess of soggy salad leaves with mealy tomatoes), the prospect of normal tasting food makes me very happy...

I know it's hard to believe, but a year ago, "CSA" meant nothing to me. When I first discovered CSA's, I fell in love with the idea right away. I wiki'd CSA, I googled it, I browsed a few sites and I thought it all seemed fairly straightforward. You buy a "share" of produce from your farmer, you pick it up each week, and that's that.

Turns out there's a lot more to it than that. Farms are essentially small businesses, adapting and adjusting to the local market. The end result? As many varieties of CSA structures as there are varieties of apples (fun fact: there are 7500+ varieties of apples worldwide!) All of this makes customizing your CSA experience easier, but it can be overwhelming for a first timer (me).

Everyone has different ways of going about things. I started my search for the perfect CSA by pretending I was looking for a boyfriend.* I made a preliminary list of "dealmakers" and "dealbreakers" to weed out the bad apples and narrow things down.

Dealmakers/Dealbreakers

• Must be located nearby (preferably less than 10 minutes away): If I had to lug a sack of produce halfway across Manhattan...I just wouldn't go. I'm lazy, what can I say? I'm also realistic. It's called "managing expectations." But seriously, if I can't even haul my sorry little ass to the gym which is like... three blocks away from me, there's no way I can motivate myself to drag bags of carrots and lettuce cross-town. Especially in the sweltering NY summer heat. Okay, the more I think about this, the more I realize that I should be ashamed. Three blocks. Yes. Next.

Tip: Local Harvest is a fantastic site for screening CSA's by location.


• Must be super fresh: If it's less fresh than the corner deli, what's the point?! Also, remember...I'm a picky person. If it's not fresh, I'm not going to eat it, except out of desperation. And desperate girls = hard times. A situation to be avoided by all parties at all costs.



• Must have convenient pick up times: I just graduated and there are no summer interns yet. This means I'm the very bottom of the corporate totem pole. I know I'm polite and charming and all, but I still can't imagine my boss reacting very well if I casually mentioned, "Oh, by the way, brb. Gotta skip out and pick up my weekly fruits and vegetables. Thx." Yeah, not happening.



• Must be reasonably priced: I'm poor yo (relatively speaking). Student loans and all that. Plus, Manhattan COL is absurdly high. I'm sure entire families live off of my monthly rent for a full YEAR in other parts of the world. I know, I know. #firstworldproblems



• Must be reasonably sized: Somewhat related to the pricing question. I can't possibly eat five cabbages in one week (nor should I for the sake of those around me). I also don't have the time to preserve or can extra produce. So either I find a CSA with individual sized shares or I convince someone to let me split a share with them.

By the time I finished screening for these dealmakers/breakers, I had a much smaller list to choose from. I picked through the remainders for the perfect CSA with my next list:

Nice to have:

• Pretty website/blog (bonus points for pictures): Some of the CSA's I stumbled upon had great blogs with weekly updates on how the season was progressing. They had great pictures of each week's produce as well, which I thought was fantastic. It also helped me gauge share size. I know it's hard work to update and maintain websites and blogs, so I appreciated the effort from the farmers and CSA's that much more. Plus, it adds legitimacy to the CSA/farm. When you see a track record of quality and high performance, you worry less about the competency of the CSA/farm.



• Similar values or customer demographic: I don't think it's a dealbreaker if the CSA or farm doesn't cater to my demographic, but it's nice to have. For example, if someone felt passionately about organic produce, they could search for an organic CSA. On the other hand, if a small family wanted a CSA with a local community focus, they could choose one that allowed for family farm outings, family-oriented activities, kid-friendly produce, etc. Other CSA's tended to cater towards foodies (purple carrots!) or young people with time-suck careers (lower time obligations and commitments). Guess which one I picked.



• Variety of produce: For me, the freshness of the produce is more important than the variety. Having said that, it's always nice to have a wide range of different vegetables to choose from. Some farms go one step further and collaborate with each other to bring a wider offering of local products to their customers. For example, some CSA's have add-ons like fruit shares, eggs, chickens, fresh flowers, dairy products, honey and cheese. Exciting stuff!

After browsing some more, I found The One. Turtle Bay CSA. Nailed all my criteria.

This brings us to the present. We'll see how this summer fling goes. Maybe I'll stick around for the long haul ;).

On a totally related note, Jeremy Lin is going to be my husband. It really is related**. We were just talking about The One, weren't we? <3 JLin

*No, this is not actually how I go about looking for boyfriends. But maybe I should. haha..

**I just want to point out that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Jeremy Lin is healthy looking (see below for evidence). I bet he eats vegetables too.

TOTALLY RELEVANT:


I would never desperately justify the presence of JLin pictures in a blog about vegetables. Desperate girls = avoid at all costs, remember? Besides, the JLin-vegetable connection isn't really that much of a stretch. I bet you could come up with a dozen horrific Lin puns. EggpLINt? LINteloupe? Community Supported AgLINculture? Ok ok I'll stop. I'm making myself cringe too.

Also, if he ever signs up for a CSA, I call dibs on splitting a share with him. Girl can dream right?

Fruit of my Labor

More accurately, vegetables of my labor. Haha.

I touched on the reasons why I started looking for a CSA in my last post, but I forgot to mention which CSA I ended up with after all my research!

I ultimately decided on Turtle Bay CSA, which partners with Free Bird Farm. They offer a vegetable share for $500 plus a $15 administration fee, along with fruit shares, eggs, and chickens. I restrained myself from signing up for everything, but only barely. If I cooked more regularly than once every two weeks, I would definitely consider signing up for the other shares. Plus, given that this is my first CSA experience, I thought it might be smart to try out the vegetable share first and see how that goes.

I looked through the Free Bird Farm blog with posts on last summer’s weekly produce offerings, and it seems like you get quite a lot of veg for the $$$ you pay. For $500, you get 22 weeks worth of produce, which could easily supply a family of four. That's about $6 per person per week. Not bad.

I love good quality produce and I'll eat a lot more vegetables than the average person in a week. Still, even I can’t eat that much veg in one week, so I persuaded/coerced my lovely roommate into splitting a share with me. :D She’s pretty appreciative of fresh produce as well, so it worked out great.

CSA sign ups are in February and previous CSA members get first dibs on shares. Fortunately, there was still room for new members, so I signed up as soon as they announced the extra space. We just sent in our check for the vegetable share. I’m so excited! The prospect of fresh produce is making me positively giddy. Produce nerd right here, what’s up.

No but seriously, I can’t wait. It’s been a dreary, if mild, winter. Good thing we have cute pictures like this:

BONUS PICTURE: