by Eric Richard

This is the second part in a series on my experiences joining a CSA. For background, you can see the first article.

One of the requirements of the particular CSA that we joined is that all new members attend a 2-hour “orientation”. We attended our orientation last week.

We didn’t really know what we were getting into with the orientation and had no idea what they could talk about for 2-hours, but we figured it was mandatory, so we didn’t have much of a choice. =)

The meeting started off slowly as people slowly meandered in, but once it did get rolling, the first thing we did was go around the room and talk about what people were looking to get out of the CSA. I have to say I was pretty astonished at how many people were looking at the CSA as an opportunity to really roll their sleeves up and get their hands dirty. While my wife and I viewed the work requirement of the CSA as an inconvenient necessity, many folks were really excited to help participate in the farming process itself.

Then we got to meet Ari and Moira, the couple who runs the farm. Ari is basically in charge of everything related to the actual farming (figuring out when to plant what, where to plant it, when to harvest, etc.) while Moira is in charge of all of the operations (contacting all of the members, recruiting new members, etc.)

One of the things that I found surprising was how many members the CSA has. I forget the exact number, but Moira said that they have over 200 shareholders this year. For some reason I was imagining a few dozen folks.

They talked some about the history of the CSA. According to Ari, they started the CSA about fifteen years ago. Ari had seen a presentation by Robyn Van En — the founder of Indian Line Farm, the first CSA in the U.S. that just happens to be located in Massachusetts.

They talked a little bit about the philosophy behind CSAs (much of which was covered in the previous post). One point that they touched on was that being part of a CSA can really help you get a much better understanding of the natural cycle of food in your local region. They talked about how we’ve become accustomed to being able to have strawberries at all times during the year since we can import them from Chile or wherever they are growing at a given time.

They pointed out that as part of a CSA, you will learn to live by the farm’s timescale, not your own. You don’t get to choose when you want broccoli or strawberries or tomatoes; they will come when they are ready and in the amounts that the land can produce.

One thing that is a bit exciting, but also a bit intimidating is the wide variety of foods that they produce. Ari talked about all sorts of vegetables that they are farming and how you’ll show up one week and have edamame or bok choy or many other more exotic foods and it will basically be up to you to figure out what to do with them and how to incorporate them into your meals.

They talked a little bit about the actual process for food distribution. I have to say that I am a bit scared for how this is going to work. They sure did make it sound like a bit of organized chaos. Our first food distribution is this upcoming Saturday, so we’ll know more then.

One thing that is interesting (that Liz already alluded to) is that they have a fair amount of “pick your own” food during the weekly distributions. Ari explained that they do this for foods that are simply too costly to harvest en masse. For example, when the strawberries are ready, we’ll show up and they will tell us that as part of our distribution, we can pick 1 quart of strawberries.

I haven’t figured out if this is a positive or negative yet. We’ll have to see how it works out.

The good news is the meeting only lasted about 45 minutes or so. I think we walked out feeling nervously excited for the interesting adventure that lay in front of us.