Besides dodging errant snowflakes or attending State Tourney games, March is an excellent month to start thinking about what your having for dinner this summer. You don't have to plan out the entire menu now...but if you want an inexpensive way to partake in the locally produced bounty of organic foods, you better start thinking about the source. Sure there's always the produce aisle at the supermarket, you see all those organic signs all over the place these days. And there's the hippie co-ops they're a good source of organic foods. Great but both of these can get rather pricey if your interested in doing a lot of home cooking this summer.
The answer is; join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), that is if your ready to commit to receiving about 30 pounds of fresh produce every week. A CSA is cooperative of sorts. Your membership fee acts as a purchase a guarantee for the farm. The catch is most, if not all, the local CSA's depend on you taking vegetables you may know very little or care very little about. There are some programs that will allow you to select specific varieties and quantities of fresh goods, but these can be just as costly as the grocery. There are also some smaller CSA's that poll their members for a list of vegetables they'd like to have grown. But this all takes some work to find out.
Your first step is to go to your local food co-op and talk to someone in the produce department about it. Their generally very knowledgeable about which CSA's they deal with or which ones use their stores as drop off points for members to pick up their weekly allotments. The next step is to go online to the Local Harvest web site (link below). Local Harvest is a non-profit organization that promotes sustainable agriculture and acts as a national clearing house connecting farmers and end users.
But whatever you do, you've got to act fairly quickly. Getting produce from a CSA is a commitment you need to make well in advance of the growing season. The process of joining a CSA will vary slightly from group to group, but generally, they all ask for the money up front (to pay for seed etc.). The price of a membership is generally $350 for a half membership, that means taking half a bushel a week and about $600 for a full membership that guarantees you a full bushel of fresh goodies every week. That's about 50 pounds of produce. Now for the average family of four, that's very doable. I know several people, who are too busy to worry about cooking 50 pounds of produce a week, split the membership with one or two neighbors. Most CSA's will start delivering the end of May and continue until the growing season ends or mid October, whichever is later.
Local organic and sustainable food that's reasonably priced is possible. You just need to do a little homework and be ready to make a commitment.
More Info on CSA's :
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