The Urban Omnivore

Community Supported Agriculture is a model of agriculture that enables a community of individuals (read consumers) to take on some of the risks, typically financial, associated with local agriculture. The individuals, usually referred to as “members” or “share-holders”, make an upfront payment to cover the materials, grower’s salary, etc. needed to run a farm for a season. In return, members receive a portion of the farmer’s crop. This portion typically comes in the form of a weekly drop-off of a box filled with a variety of vegetables, flowers, eggs, meat, or whatever else the farmer produces. As each farm is different, so are the requirements and benefits of each CSA. There are some CSAs that require members to spend a certain amount of time over the season at the farm planting, tending, or harvesting. Often these CSAs allow members to opt-out (if they’re not inclined to their hands dirty) of the time at the farm in return for extra money to hire workers who will fill in.

Finding and choosing a CSA can be as simple or as time-consuming as you make it. A great place to start is Local Harvest where you can search within a specified radius of your zip code for local farms, stores, restaurants, and markets that participate in a local, sustainable food chain. Look at the descriptions of the local farms to see what sort of CSA they offer and how you can find more information. Some farms have websites, most have email addresses, and all of them have phone numbers listed. If you’re like me, the web is your comfort zone and you’ll be drawn to CSAs with websites or at least email addresses. However, I strongly encourage you to pick up the phone and call farms that offer deliveries in your area or specialty services that you’re interested in. You’ll find that the farmers are extremely friendly and very informative. I recently spent 30 minutes on the phone with a local farmer who answered all of my questions about his farm’s growing practices, philosophies, etc.

Another great site for information on CSAs (and other sustainable food services) in your area is the Eat Well Guide. I found that Local Harvest was better for specifically finding CSAs while the Eat Well Guide had more farms and services listed (not all farms have CSAs).

This season, Katie and I have chosen two CSAs to participate in: The Food Project and Stillman’s at the Turkey Farm. We chose two because we’ll be getting weekly boxes of vegetables from The Food Project and monthly boxes of meats from Stillman’s at the Turkey Farm.

While researching CSAs, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that were so many in the Boston area. Of course, with more variety there was also more anxiety over choosing “the right one” for our first year when all of them looked so good. In the end, we chose The Food Project because of their mission statement. The Food Project not only runs a farm in Lincoln, MA but also has many urban sites in Boston. They have reclaimed/remediated a good amount of land in Boston, transforming it from abandoned lots, littered with broken down cars and construction debris into clean plots of land that can support healthy, organic agriculture. The Food Project also provides youth leadership training to a diverse community of children in the area who spend time working the lands, learning about food and agriculture, and interacting with each other.

We chose Stillman’s at the Turkey Farm because of the friendliness of the farmers, Kate and Aidan. Aidan is the farmer who spent so much time on the phone with me answering questions while Kate has been extremely responsive over email. We also had the pleasure of meeting both of them at a recent Slow Food event where we got to taste one of their pigs (prepared by the chefs at The Garden of Eden Cafe).

Boxes should start arriving in a few months and I’ll be sure to post lots of pictures and reviews.