After exploring several options for buying produce at the beginning of summer, I decided to try a CSA this year for the first time.
CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. The basic concept is that members will buy into a share of a farm (usually paid up front, or sometimes you can work on the farm to earn your share), in return the farm will provide a weekly box of produce and products. Sometimes the box is filled by the farm, or some farms offer up all their produce and members pick and choose. Some have delivery to drop off locations, others even have front porch delivery to your house.
My CSA bounty thus far:
The CSA I am participating in is an organic veggie share, but there are also fruit, meat, egg, breads, dairy and all sorts of shares available from different farms. The farm I bought into, Grant Family Farms, has multiple offerings and share sizes. Their season lasts from early summer to December.
The region I live in has a fairly short growing season (Colorado), but you would be surprised what can still be produced. Here were my first two deliveries:
First week – Spinach, cilantro, italian parsley, green onions, bag of chopped rhubarb, bag of snow peas, romaine lettuce.
Second week – Romaine lettuce, swiss chard, cilantro, green onions, radishes, baby beets, english peas, 3 zucchini squash, caserta squash (I think), baby greens, and a couple garlic scapes.
That is quite a bit of food for a single share! I can always upgrade to a couples share, but for now I am working on using all the veggies in the single share in a week.
There will be times that I get food I will not eat. For example I expect the potatoes in the fall/winter to go mostly unused in our house. I will trade or give them to friends when the time comes. That will be the downside of buying into a share for a full season while I am following a paleo lifestyle. Some farms let you omit foods, or in my case I can trade with other members at the drop off location.
Need more reasons to join a CSA?
The positive for the farmer is that they have less marketing and more early season funds to help support the farm through the year. They can focus more on farming, less on distribution. The produce is usually ultra fresh and this is one of the most direct ways to support a local farm.
If you are looking to shop more local, a CSA is a great option, especially for busy schedules. I found myself unable to get to the farmers markets on the weekends consistently and the cost of local produce in my grocery stores is quite high. It only took me a couple hours to research, locate and sign up for a farm that delivered a couple miles from my home once a week.
Most farms also offer tours, what a great family day to visit and maybe even help out!
There are some things to be aware of though…..
There are some ups and downs to a CSA, but if you work it correctly it can usually be a cost effective way to get local and organic produce.
Some of the negatives to consider would be that you are subject to the good and bad years on a farm. If weather destroys a crop, they may have less output for a period of time.
You must also change your weekly menu based on what is in season. This is not a bad thing in the long run, but if you are used to buying tomatoes in January, good chance you will have to learn how to freeze, can, and change the menu accordingly. I am realistic that it will take time to learn to cook seasonally, another reason I bought just a single share this year. You could consider going into a share with a friend to help the transition as well.
Lastly, most CSA’s do not discount for weeks you do not use your produce, so you will need to find a home for items when you go out of town. My CSA has a ‘share’ box, where if there is something in the box that week you do not like or will not use, you can share with others (and vice versa you can take from the bin if you need it). I also have plenty of friends who would be happy to have local organic produce.
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For me though, the positives far outweighed the negatives. My first goal was to support a local farm and reduce the distance my food travels to our table, check. My second was to learn to cook more seasonally, double check. My last goal was to cut down on my produce cost, triple check.
I am getting organic, local, seasonal produce delivered weekly within a couple miles of my home for less cost and time then I was spending while price shopping the local stores and farmers markets. Sounds like a win! The only downside I ended up having was coming up with a larger sum of money up front for the share cost.
I think the only thing better then a CSA at this point would be to grow my own food, but if I was left to raise our food we would be quite hungry right now. So for now, this works great for our household.
Here are some links to help you find a CSA in you area:
US
Local Harvest CSA Search
Eat Well Farm Search
Rodale Institute Farm Locator
Wilson College Farm Search
Rural Bounty CSA Search
Canada
Eat Well Farm Search
Canadian Organic Growers Directory
International
Wilson College International CSA List
Grow Food Farm Search
Some farms are small and sell their shares out early or before the season even starts. I found a large farm that tends to have shares open year round and you can buy in at any time for an adjusted price. So do not be discouraged no matter what time of year you are looking.
As a side note, my farm has a Facebook page and members who would like to sell their shares at a discounted price will post there. I was actually able to get into my share at an even better price then usual by watching for one of these to become available! You may even be able to contact a farm with no available shares and get on a wait list for something like this to open up.
Another bonus to the Facebook page, members post recipes which helps when you are getting foods you have never used before or bulk items. I am looking forward to discussion on canning when that time comes around.
So remember, buying local does not have to be expensive or difficult!
(Top photo courtesy of Grant Family Farms)
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post! We also live in Colorado and have done several different CSAs in the past. At this point our garden produces way more than we can eat so a CSA would sort of be silly.
But if I were to do it again this looks like a good one. We did Cresset Farm one year which was really convenient because their drop off was only a few blocks from where I was working at the time. Unfortunately, they were way into herbs and “off the wall” sorts of vegetables many of which I was allergic to.
So then we tried a CSA through Denver Urban Gardens (can’t remember the name of the farm but it’s on the east side of Denver). It was a HUGE amount of food, and did much better in the allergy department, but the pick up was at the farm during rush hour which meant 3 hours in the car every week just to pick up the CSA. Totally NOT worth it!
So I guess if I were to offer advice to CSA newbies I’d say find out about the pick up times and places before signing up, and if you’ve got food restrictions you might want to inquire about the crops they plant too.
On another note… I find it curious that potatoes are not included on the paleo diet thing. Wouldn’t you think that hunter gatherers would have foraged for roots and tubers? Curious…
Thanks for the additional advice. There definitely are a lot of variables when choosing a CSA! I wanted to go with a smaller farm, but there are some advantages to the large ones. Their online system and newsletters are great, plus they have staff to handle shareholders. I know when I had raw milk shares, it was REALLY hard to handle the office/billing type stuff with the farmers….totally understand, they were probably in the barn 14 hrs a day!
In regards to potatoes, it depends on the theory you follow. I believe some Paleo paths discuss potatoes as okay, while others or the Primal path tend to avoid them. Technically, potatoes are a nightshade (like a tomato, eggplant, etc), where as a sweet potato is in a totally different family. Potatoes contain glycoalkaloids, essentially toxins. They are partially destroyed through cooking, but this would be why some folks avoid those in the nightshade family, it can cause health problems. I have noticed this with too many tomatoes at once with my own health. If I have to go potato, I am learning to go yam or sweet potato first.
One other factor, the primal concept is to keep carbs low and use fat for energy. Too many potatoes and you switch the body back over to sugar fuel. I find that when I eat easily digestible carbohydrates, my hunger factor starts to creep up (and health decline). So I will likely only eat small amounts of the CSA potatoes and sweet potatoes that arrive this year, but I suspect some friends will be benefiting more then me, lol. Thanksgiving will be at my house, so maybe I will use them for social functions instead. Athletes and super active people who follow primal do actually eat more carbs to restore glycogen stores, but I do not exercise enough to warrant that yet.
Wow! Thanks for all of that info! I seem to remember reading something in Jared Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs and Steel” about nightshades being a very recently domesticated plant family… and the poisonous aspect is a little bit worrisome! Good thing I like sweet potatoes so much better anyhow!
It’s very interesting to me how people who are coming at the diet thing from totally different directions… Atkins, South Beach, Michael Pollan, and now this Paleo approach… it’s like they’re all ending up with very similar conclusions. Makes me think there’s something to it.
I actually heard that some guy in the 19th century actually had a similar theory. I have never read his “book” but here’s a link if you’re curious: http://www.lowcarb.ca/corpulence/
Thanks again for all of the wonderful information!
You know, I think I have seen a quote from that book before (the Letter on Corpulence), but that is the first time I have read it through. Thanks for the link, I enjoyed that! I have to chuckle a bit though at how much the author struggled with weight, but his loss was just 50lbs to health. We are definitely living in the supersize age.
Thanks again, I am saving that one for future use!
Wow, great post!
Looks like you got some good stuff from your CSA share. I have been wanting to join one for veggies and fruits, but at the moment pretty much everything is in sale. I might do it in a few months to get squash and that kind of stuff.
JP
Another site to check out is ruralbounty.com. It is a North American Agritourism Directory that will show you CSA’s
Thanks for the additional link, I added it to the list!
I’ve done a share once, back in Georgia, and it was pitifully not worth the money and effort. We live in California again, thank goodness, and I’m fleshing out sources for grass-fed, etc. A CSA would be awesome if we could find one as prolific as the one you’ve got there. For now, I visit our local farmer’s market each Sunday. This makes me think to ask if any of the vendor’s do CSA’s, though, so thanks!
I am jealous that you get the CA produce! We have a few good farmers markets here (Boulder especially), but its over an hour drive so I don’t get up there often. The ones closer to my house need some work…more snow cones and pastry sales then veggies…and you actually have to ask if the veggies are local because a good deal of the time they are not! I am thinking of sending letters to my local markets to revise their vendor policies.