CSA: 9 Things Your Farmer Wished You Knew

CSA stands for "community supported agriculture," and it refers to a defined group of individuals who have pledged to support a local farm, to share the risks and benefits of food production with the growers. "CSA" can be used as an adjective to describe the economic model of a farm, a noun to refer to the share of vegetables received, and a verb, meaning, to participate in the know-your-farmer, visit-your-farm and cook seasonally movement by eating a diverse weekly assortment of always fresh and sometimes unusual vegetables.

Spark Creative Photography / Via greenwagonfarm.com

1. Foremost, We Are Farmers

Green Wagon Farm

Not magicians, nutritionists, psychics, dictators, cheerleaders, or Rachael Ray. Our primary aim is to plan & plow, seed & plant, grow crops not weeds, and harvest at peak freshness and flavor. We're not here to feed you per se, but to give you the tools (vegetables) to feed yourselves. We aim to inspire but we cannot possibly prepare you for what you are about to experience—your CSA is for you to discover. We also are not event planners, marketing managers, or customer service representatives, though we do try our best to be those things, checking emails over lunch or in the field.

2. Our Compost is Your Compost

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Pile in! Waste is the number one struggle listed by CSA-members, but it is not a burden you have to bear. If you know you won't eat it, you can leave it at the farm, you can share it with a neighbor, you can put it in your freezer until winter, or you can compost it. Encountering the full-circle of your diet is part of the mindfulness that a CSA might instill in you, if you let it. Think fertility not filth. Bring your food scraps back to the farm or vermicompost/bokashi them yourself. There is a learning curve to CSA, and waste is part of it.

3. Ugly Food is Good Food

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And without you to eat it, we'd waste a lot—of time, energy, land, and money. No, two small and/or ghastly celeriac will not make a soup, but they can add a certain salty tang (no strings attached) to your favorite roast or stew. And don't you think Siamese twin zucchini have a certain charm? We sometimes have to give our more conventional looking vegetables to market customers and restaurants, but only because we love you, and we think you'll understand.

4. Weird Vegetables are Crop Insurance

Green Wagon Farm

We also think they're beautiful and undercelebrated and tasty and add biodiversity to our farms. We plant a huge array of vegetables because some things, inevitably, do not grow as planned. The sequence and severity of sun and rain create wildly different seasons with differing amounts of success across vegetable type and variety. This is not failure on the part of the farmer (generally) but inconsistency on the part of nature.

5. There Will Be Greens

Green Wagon Farm

In the Midwest, we have several months of frozen ground every year, and tender green sprouts are the first to successfully emerge. It takes much more sunlight and significantly more time to grow buds, flowers, fruits, rhizomes, roots, and bulbs. Your first few CSA boxes will contain mostly greens because this is all the world can do with a seed in such short time. The rest of your CSA boxes might still contain a lot of greens. These are called "leaves." In the plant world, everybody's got 'em. You have all winter to miss 'em, so learn how to harness their extremely nutritious goodness while you can (turn your fridge down a couple degrees, get a juicer, make green smoothies, learn to veggie chip, and green-up your stirfrys, pasta, soups, quiche or risottos).

6. Farms are Not Grocery Stores

Green Wagon Farm

Our goal is not to give you everything you want in the amounts you think you need. That is the work of a magician. Or a grocery store. While we are working to learn how to best grow everything perfectly every season, this takes an enormous number of advanced skills and intimate knowledge of a piece of land. CSAs are also not market-stands, where we can afford to spend more time harvesting a smaller number of goods every week—things like beans and peas and cherry tomatoes that are expensive to harvest in large numbers by hand. CSAs are what we say they are and also what you make of them.

7. We are Not Capitalizing on a Trend

Green Wagon Farm

We aren't really capitalizing on anything. To meet our customer's expectations, we keep prices low. We always give you at least a little more than what you pay for, but usually significantly more. The vegetables are a labor of fourteen-hour-day love and minimum-wage love and also the fruits of exhaustion and working second jobs. Mostly, we believe in a movement that honors transparency and commitment, and that hopes for the day that physical labor and care for the land will eventually outlive chemical fertilizers and outrageous subsidies. Yes, your CSA is fun and challenging and healthy, but it is also a vote for small-scale, human-powered agriculture, which is bigger than you and really important.

8. Your CSA Might Just Change You

Green Wagon Farm

If you weren't much for staying-in and cooking a meal using whole ingredients, you might be now. Accepting unknowns, working creatively within limitations, learning new ways of cooking, and adapting your diet to fit the seasons and the produce of your particular farm… these are the tenets of CSA. Picky eaters and people who don't like vegetables, beware, a CSA could transform you, in a matter of seasons.

9. A CSA Might Not Be For You and That's Okay

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Before you buy a CSA, read the membership agreement. Shop around. Ask questions. CSAs help farmers in the off-season when they have the highest cost of pre-season materials, soil amendments, and seeds, but farmers have costs all year round, and there are other ways to directly support local farms: like the farmers market. Eating at restaurants whose sourcing you trust is another important part of the equation. You can also buy your Thanksgiving turkey direct, put away a side of grass-fed pork in your freezer, join a buying club, or try an egg or milk CSA--they tend to be more straightforward.

A mixed vegetable CSA is a commitment not everybody's ready for, and there's certainly a learning curve. It takes a few seasons to overcome the daikon radish and learn how to kohlrabi. It's hard, we know! But don't give up. There are many ways to support farmers, source ethically, and eat according to the seasons. So buy a cookbook and season your cast iron skillet. We're all in this together.