This is part one of a multi-part series about CSA farms (Community Supported Agriculture’s), how they work, and who works them.
Your CSA farmer may not be Graham and Bianca (sucks to be you) but I’m sure they’re great. The “who” behind a CSA farm is really, in part, you. Yes, your farmer works his tail off every season to deliver you fresh produce in the healthiest way he can, but without his community supporting him, he will fail. To create a sense of community again in times like these seems priceless, but it apparently is not. Its costs vary according to your CSA, and it’s returns are more than food. They are community, family, health, friendship, and much more. More than can be seen or measured. More than can be weighed on any scale. It’s even more than consumer and producer. It’s a pledge in your local farmer with a return. It is, in essence, edible stock in your local community.
I recently had the great pleasure to sit down and chat with Graham and Bianca from Valhalla Farms. If I meet my own expectation of this article, I will by no means do the two of them any justice. The vast amount of knowledge, dedication, and joy for farming will in no way shape or form be able to be expressed in this blog. Only by meeting them face to face could you ever understand the joy that it was meeting with them and learning more, not only about how a CSA farm works, but about THEM.
To me, one of the things that stuck in my head the most about purchasing produce from a CSA is that you know where your food is. If at any point in the middle of the night you wake up distressed, thinking about the poor living conditions of your turnip plants, you can get in your car and drive by the farm. Breathe a sigh of relief, because Graham and Bianca have taken great measures to ensure the quality of your turnip plants. Hyperbole? Yes. Fact? Also yes. What is better than know exactly where your food is before it hits your table? You can even go feel the dirt that it’s growing in if you ask nicely.
Do you know where your turnip plants from Walmart come from? Me neither, and I’m sure that nobody stocking them knows either. You might get an answer like “Uhh, I just grabbed the box from the back” along with a very confused/ possibly angsty look. Push your cart very politely back to the cart corral, get in your car, and go to Valhalla Farms. If you ask Graham where his turnips come from, he will give you that information plus the history of hybrid turnip plants and the most suitable soil types and zones to grow them. Have you ever seen rain man? It’s like that.
In this article, I hope to teach you (and learn myself) a bit more about how a CSA works and how it works for YOU. It’s being inserted in your body, so you have the right to know where it comes from and what it is. I hope that you enjoy reading this article as much as I have had fun writing it and learning more about CSA farms, especially Valhalla Farms. If you have more questions than answers, stay tuned for the next couple of sessions and I will fill you in on the how’s and why’s.
Start small, think big, and stay healthy!