on the farm

Robert and I just joined a CSA with two friends who were members last year. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. The basic idea is that before the growing season starts, you buy a share of the season’s yield from a farmer. This share is quite literally “seed money”* and helps the farmer avoid securing loans that would need to be paid back with interest later in the season. In some CSAs, you also commit to doing a certain amount of work each season (in ours, it’s four hours per adult for the entire season).

In return, you get to pick up a share’s worth of produce each week and sometimes “pick your own” produce of the more labor-intensive varieties (think beans or strawberries, and perhaps even flowers). The season is about 15 weeks long. The farm we’re subscribing to is certified organic and picks almost all its produce the same day that you pick up (or at least within 24 hours of pickup).

CSAs help keep small farmers in business. The shareholders participate in the season’s risk with the farmer, getting less in sparse years and more in bountiful years. But at our orientation this weekend, the farmer mentioned other benefits -- he doesn’t work with a middleman and he doesn’t package his produce, and the produce isn't transported to central markets and then back out to consumers.

Apparently, the average distance produce typically travels is 500 miles -- a lot of fuel is used to make that transportation possible. In fact, this discussion is all very timely for me. A few weeks ago, the Boston Sunday Globe carried an article describing the debate between eating organic and eating local. I’m looking forward to eating both and eating much closer to the seasons.

On and off over the years, I've belonged to food coops. This whole CSA concept seems to capture the best aspects of coops while dispensing with the worst. I look forward to not having to satisfy the demands of crazy and nasty fellow cooperators, for one. But I look forward also to participating in some small way in procuring my own food, in cooperation with others, especially the main producers.

This weekend, at our orientation, we saw some seeds that are in the earliest stages of germination under growlights. We then moved on to the greenhouse where sprouted seeds have been transplanted into pots with more space. The plants are getting natural light in preparation for being moved outside later in the season.

We sampled parsnip spears that had been coated lightly in oil and roasted at 400 degrees. The parsnips had overwintered in the ground and had just been picked that morning. They were very sweet. Robert thought he had died and gone to heaven. He really perked up when we were invited to take some parsnips home as the very first part of our share. He prepared them exactly as had been done at the farm, and we happily munched on them at dinner.

I hope to post updates about the farm throughout the season.


* Those of us in the software industry are used to hearing the term "seed money" applied to the earliest part of a startup venture during which the founders are developing a "proof-of-concept" version of the software they want the company to eventually build. In fact, I've arrived at my new company so early in the game that people still occasionally refer to the seed phase they went through a few months ago. I'm amused that I'm finally participating in the kind of "seed phase" for which the term was invented.