CSA... kind of rolls off your tongue, no? It's short for community supported agriculture and it's another great way of supporting local farmers and buy local produce.
A CSA is a group of people that have been paired up with a regional farmer to receive a share of that farmer's crop. The farmer sells shares in their farm's upcoming season to individuals, families, or groups. The share price goes toward the cost of growing and distributing a seasons worth of produce and paying the farmer a living wage.
Each week of the CSA season (usually from June through November) the farmer delivers the weeks share to a central distribution site. Members collect their food at their neighborhood sites. Typically, each weeks share provides between seven and ten types of fruits and vegetables, enough for a family of two to three people. Over the course of a season members get at least forty different types of crops, usually organic, always fresh-picked and changing with the seasons.
For those in the New York area and New England, membership season is just kicking into high gear.
There are CSAs all over the city and Just Food is a great resource for finding one in your neighborhood. For listings in other cities, try a google search for "CSA" or "Community Supported Agriculture" and the name of your town.
I love my CSA -- it's absolutely changed the way I eat as the food is so much richer and more abundant that my produce picks pre-CSA. Part of it is the quality -- organic, fresh, local -- and meeting the people behind your food is motivation to turn even the uncertain (and sometimes unloved) vegetables into something fantastic.
I'm a member of Hellgate CSA in Astoria -- my name for the link. Our veggies come from Green Thumb Farm on Long Island.
Thanks Sara Kate!
csa also stands for chemical shift anisotropy in my science land. :)
up in new england- we love our csa.
we've been introduced to foods we wouldn't have otherwise tried- mustard greens (slow-cooked wiith raisins and onions-yum!) beets, chiogga beets, actually USING a whole bunch of parsley (cooking it with rice- YUM), and we have a vegetarian household!
highly recommend.
plus, the deborah madison cookbook, vegetarian cooking for everyone, has been a big help; with simple, yummy recipes for all the vegetables we've been receiving.
I love my CSA, too! It is a bargain, a learning experience, a community activity, a great way to meet new friends (hi Jayme!) and do your part to protect local farms/environment. As you can tell, I'm pretty crazy about it. Also, I'm just really into food and cooking and this is the place to get ingredients that are out of this world without having to ride the subway. (I'm an outer boroughs kind of girl.)
And, if you look on Just Food's page and don't see a CSA near you, they have information to help you start one in your neighborhood.
Does anyone in Brooklyn have a CSA they could recommend? I live in Greenpoint and was looking at this one http://williamsburgcsa.org/.