CSA’s, Community Supported Agriculture is an extremely important thing to support. Even as more and more of us are growing gardens in our urban settings – local CSA’s support the preservation of farm land in the area that we live.
I joined my CSA in 1995 – I had just heard about the concept in an article in the paper about Claire Thomas who had started The Root Connection in Woodinville. Turns out that Claire was one of the (if not THE) people that first brought the concept of CSA’s to this area. Fortunately for me – her CSA Farm turned out to be less than 5 miles from where I live. I signed up immediately.
Through that experience, my family and I started eating with the rhythms of the seasons as well as what grows locally on the same soil as where I live. Funny thing – everyone started becoming healthier. It was just because of the quality of organic veggies we were eating – it was also because these veggies were grown within 5 miles of where we live. There’s more to that than I think we’re understand to date. I think we’ll only discover more and more about those benefits.
We also started eating things we didn’t know – like Chioggia Beets, which have become one of my favorite things! Yum! I love to slice them up into little pieces and sprinkle them over a salad – it looks like confetti and there’s a party happening. And then there is Kohlrabi – a veggie I’m still learning to like and use!
There is also something very grounding about making a weekly journey out to the farm to pick up your weekly share of the harvest. It’s grounding. It’s very grounding in a time when we herald and reward multitasking and face-paced lifestyles. But something happened to me on my little journey out to the farm — I would start to unwind and slowly drift into another state that was connected to something bigger and kinder. By the time I arrived I was ready to be nourished.
When you start adding all of these things up – it’s a bargain. And every year I try to pay for my share in advance because I know that money will go to buy seeds for the next year’s harvest. And then we wait for the spring to come, and the ground to warm up and out here in the Northwest – we also wait for the soil to dry up from our soggy winters! And soon the notice will come announcing the date of the first harvest and the whole ritual will begin again.