Locavores + CSAs

Locavore: someone who buys and eats food that was grown or produced locally, usually within a 100 mile radius of one's home.

How am I a locavore, you might ask? Well actually, I am about 30-50% locavore on any given day. I am a share holder in a local organic farm that supplies their locally grown produce to community members on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. This type of farm to household agreement is called Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA. By becoming a CSA member you are fortunate enough to be supplied with a produce box full of fresh, ripe, organic, crisp, seasonal and delicious fruit and vegetables to enjoy for breakfast, lunch and dinner for however long they will last! You sign up ahead of time for a certain growing season, say Jan-April, and a box of yummy produce is delivered weekly or bi-weekly from the farm to you. You and other share holders support the farm's operational costs and employees by purchasing the CSA membership so the growers can be more financially secure, use less time marketing, receive better prices for their crops, all the while selling to a local market and forming relationships with their clients. I also want to add that being a shareholder in a CSA farm means you benefit when they have great crops, but occasionally the farm has a crop failure due to various reasons and the shareholders all share in the loss. So, you may not receive as much produce as expected or less of a certain kind due to crop failure. It's a small risk worth taking!

I belong to Tierra Miguel Foundation's CSA and receive a bi-weekly box containing a variety of fruits and veggies, depending on the growing season. For example, the past few months I was getting more potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips and chard, but these past few weeks I have started to receive strawberries, lemons, oranges and lettuce (and the chard keeps on coming, arghh!). We are sad we haven't received the earthy beets in a month, but our taste buds were ecstatic when we first tasted the super sweet strawberries in the box!

Enjoying blood oranges on patio...yum!
(though your hands look like they committed a heinous crime afterward)

Why I like CSA's and being 1/2 locavore:

1. My main reason is to support local, organic and small scale agriculture. It is good for the environment in many ways. First, if food comes from a local source there is less gasoline and Co2 emissions spent on transportation. Second, farming organically means using no synthetic pesticides or fertilizers. Yes, there are more weeds and maybe there are a few holes in your chard leaf, but you, as a consumer, know that you will not be eating traces of harmful chemicals. Third, the environment and soil flourishes at organic farms. There is a living and thriving ecosystem on the farm when farmers choose to use bugs or other plants to stave or kill off other bugs and not rely solely on chemical pesticides to kill ALL. And lastly, I find small scale farmers endearing. After meeting a few, you can tell they love what they do and they have a respect for food and the environment.

2. Taste! There is almost nothing better than biting into a juicy, sweet, aromatic strawberry from the farm. The bf and I savor the strawberries and always make sure they are eaten first! Carrots were another item we loved to munch on early in the week because they had such a strong, spicy taste we had never experienced from store bought carrots before.

3. Variety. "Beets are gross and taste like dirt." That was me a short 4-5 months ago before we started getting them in our box. I like to describe beets as "earthy" now because though I still think they taste a little like dirt, I actually like it that way and prefer to use a more natural term. :) Every week we receive a variety of fruits and veggies, some we have never tasted before. It has been an awesome way to reconnect with nontraditional fruits like the Oro Blanco grapefruit, which is sweet and requires no sugar, and veggies like beets and turnips, which were great in our pork pot roasts. I have also come to find out I detest chard...and it keeps showing up in our box, uninvited! The nerve!

4. Eating healthy for me (us :) and the environment. We always ate fruits and vegetables every day, but now we incorporate so many fruits and vegetables into our meals we only cook meat about 2 times a week. The United Nations did a study on the environmental impacts of eating meat and they found out that livestock is one of the leading causes of greenhouse gases, loss of biodiversity and water pollution. I can't rule out eating meat, at least as of now, but I am going to try in the future to purchase organically raised meat and continue to chow down on veggies, fruit, tofu and soy crumbles. :)

5. Farm visits! At Tierra Miguel, they have a farm visit every first Saturday of the month. Many CSA's have visits once a season or once a month too. During these visits the members can meet the farmers, learn how their food is grown and see their next produce box still in the ground. It is also a great trip with kids and watch them be amazed when they see carrots pulled up from under ground. :)

I hope you all have learned a little more about what CSA's are and what they can do for you, the food system and the environment. Just remember to try and eat the greens, herbs and delicate fruit first. I am ashamed to admit that I have thrown out way too many half heads of lettuce or collard greens leaves; it has been a long running lesson in food preservation. So my goal these two weeks is to eat EVERYTHING from our CSA box. Good thing I have a hungry boyfriend that takes one for the team when it comes to eating all the greens.