We thought about joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for several years now, but just never actually did anything about it. Right now, we are transitioning to our little homestead and will start our first garden out there this spring. (Eeek! It’s time to start our seeds indoors already!!) Even once it’s growing, it will be summer before we really start harvesting our own foods. So in the meantime, I found an organization called Greenling here in central Texas. A little different from a typical CSA, they aren’t a single farm that delivers only what they can produce – they deliver foods from a group of local, organic and sustainable farms.
One super convenient feature is that they will deliver to my office downtown at my job in the city, so we don’t even have to go to a specified location on a particular day to pick up our produce. There are numerous options for purchase, from individual items to meal kits to the local box. We chose the local box and started out with an every other week delivery since there’s just two of us. There’s also no required contract/commitment – you can order weekly, bi-weekly or just occasionally. And the price per delivery works out to about the same amount as other CSAs we investigated here in central Texas and in Colorado.
The fun part is learning to “eat in season” just like our ancestors did; they only ate what they raised. It also helps us be a little more adventurous with trying new things that we’ve seen in the produce section at the grocery store, but never tried before. This past week we even received a live, potted parsley plant, which will join the other herbs in our garden.
Whatever options are available in your area, I encourage you to research and seriously consider joining a CSA. This helps farmers with cash flow (which helps smaller, local farms survive!) and creates a connection between them and the people who eat the foods they grow. For the consumer, you receive the freshest foods possible (which also means better tasting and full of the most vitamins and minerals) from a local source, and you know who and where your food is coming from.
