Last year I joined a CSA for the first time. This year, I visited my CSA during their open house and got to talk at length with the proprietors. As is usual, reality was not at all like my preconceptions.
I found their story interesting. And I'll share some of it with you below the fold...
I joined the "Crazy Daisy" Community Supported Agriculture farm.
Some CSAs are small farms (40 acres or less), some are huge farms that just sell a portion of their harvest using the CSA model. Some are just "hobby farms" (these days, even 40 acre farms are often considered hobby farms).
Crazy Daisy is located in Corcoran, Minnesota. A northwest suburb/exurb of Minneapolis. Jenny and Sandy Lonto run the CSA. Theirs is definitely a hobby farm. They have only about 4-5 acres under cultivation, and they sell 40 "shares" each year. My wife and bought a 1/2 share.
Here is a view of the homestead from the field. The property has been in the family since the 1950s and the farm is now being run by the fourth generation. The Lonto daughter runs the farm "officially," although it is both the mother and the daughter who work in the fields.
In an earlier diary (can one be accused of pimping a diary in one's own diary?) I wrote about the advantages of CSAs for both the farmer and the consumer. But today I was introduced to a new one. I spoke briefly with the father and asked if it was a profitable operation (I could have asked any of them, I just happened to be speaking with the father when it came up). He said that they had calculated once that Jenny and Sandy made about $2 and hour doing the farm work. But one of the biggest advantages is that running the CSA operation keeps the land taxed at agricultural rates.
This was an advantage I hadn't thought of. Crazy Daisy is located in Hennepin County, the most populous in the state. The city of Minneapolis is in Hennepin county. Property values have gone through the roof. Anecdotally, my parents built a home in the county in the early 1960s. Their initial mortgage was less than $20,000. I bought a 2 acre parcel not far from where Crazy Daisy is (in the last unincorporated township in the county) just over two years ago. The lot was over $200,000.
Many people who have lived in outer suburbs and exurbs are being priced out by tax increases caused by the flight of urban professionals like myself. Yep. I'm part of an unsustainable lifestyle.
The lady on the left is the daughter of the house who runs the CSA. My farming relatives always used to say "Knee-high by the 4th of July" about the corn crop. Despite the lack of rain in the metro area so far this year their corn is well past this benchmark.
Shortly after this picture was taken, we were offered snap peas right off the plant. Fantastic. Anyone who gardens or who has had the good fortune to be befriended by a gardener knows how much better truly fresh produce is.
I can't let this go by. My beautiful Great Dane, Freja, came along to the open house. Here she is (I haven't put any of my puppy pics up before -- I jut couldn't resist this time).
They plant the vegetables in rows, as is traditional. But between each row they plant buckwheat. Buckwheat helps prevent soil erosion, it helps to reduce the transfer of pests from crop to crop, and it fixes nutrients that help to enrich the soil when they till it under at the end of the year.
They farm organically. They use no synthetic pesticides or herbicides (in fact, they weed by hand, which, as someone who has never worked that hard in his life, blows my mind).
They do use a number of pest control methods. The bunnies and groundhogs are being successfully kept at bay with Critter Ridder and when it comes to the potato bugs that have attacked their eggplants, well, the squish 'em.
They have recently acquired ducks and chickens, which they are raising for eggs for their own use, although they have said that if they have extras, they may show up in our harvest baskets. I can't tell you how much I am hoping for that. Eggs are another product that is vastly superior fresh (although people throw them out much too often. Unless an egg is actually rotten, they still work perfectly in baked goods where it is the behavior of cooking protein and the emulsification provided by yolks that is important -- the flavor of eggs isn't a big part of their role in baking).
Speaking of the baskets:
Those baskets are where will pick up our harvests. The first one will consist of new potatoes, various cabbages, and oriental greens.
In my earlier diary on CSAs I explained how avoiding the energy used in commercial fertilizers, the long haul taken by most food, the energy spent in preserving foods for a long transport and storage in a grocery store, all of these are major contributors to the emission of greenhouse gases. By simply buying food in season, locally, you can reduce your environmental impact by as much as you would by switching from a pickup truck to a hybrid. And it will cost you a lot less.
I'll be returning to my CSA experiences several more times through the season. I hope to interview the Lontos on video and hope to have YouTube link in a future diary on this subject.
Finally, before I go, here are some useful links:
The USDA's CSA Page
Local Harvest's CSA Page
Wikipedia CSA article
The Land Stewardship Project CSA Page, which is where I found Crazy Daisy in the first place.
I'm still planning to put in solar thermal, solar PV, and a wind turbine on my property, but it feels good to be doing the CSA. It is much more effective in terms of environmental benefit per consumer dollar.
Last of all, I'm going to repeat my poll from my last diary on this subject. I hope to see you all next time!