Real Life: Local Food

I have long wanted to try Miami’s local CSA (community supported agriculture), and this month, I’ve finally got my chance. CSA’s are a way to receive local produce and support local farmers. Subscribers pay upfront for a season of veggies, and the farmers use that money to get seeds, supplies and everything else they need for the season. As a member you will receive a box of fresh, locally grown, and usually organic vegetables each week. The catch is that you don’t know what you’ll receive until you open that box. CSA’s typically also function as a "shared-risk" agreement…if there is a drought, a hurricane, or an insect infestation that affects the crops, as a member, you are sharing that risk with the farmers.

Miami’s CSA is called Redland Organics. It is a network of farms, mostly in the Redlands, that have joined together to provide this service to the community. I did not sign up for the entire season, which runs from November through April, but decided to give the one month (January only) trial membership a shot. Since trial memberships are only offered in a full share (read: a LOT of food), Tere was kind enough to share it with me. And let me tell you, it’s still a lot of food!

Eating locally is one of the biggest "green" things that you can do. We’ve talked about this before: most items on your plate have traveled 1500 miles to get there.

So, how goes the experience so far? Interesting, very interesting. I read a novel when I was younger about a couple who got married very young and poor. Their friends gave them a huge bag full of canned food, except that they took the labels off all of them. So, whenever the couple wanted to eat, they weren’t sure what they were eating until they opened the can. That’s kind of how I’m feeling on Saturday mornings. Not sure what we’re having for dinner this week until we open the box.

What we’ve received so far (Every week we receive a newsletter with an itemized list of what you’ve got, a couple of recipes, and some notes from the farm.):

Week 1: heirloom chard mix, broccoli, shiitake mushrooms, kale, turnips, lettuce, avocado, parsley, and oranges. Bonus: green beans

Week 2: asian mix, beans, braising mix, eggplant, beets, lettuce, cherry tomatoes, carrots, carambolas.

I’m not used to cooking many of these items, so it was off to AllRecipes.com for me! A turnip/potato mash was awesome. My rice & shiitakes not so much. The parsley was great in a chick pea salad, and I’m still finishing off that gigantic avocado. I’ve read several books on CSA’s, and one of the main reasons that people leave is that it’s too much food. I’d have to agree that it is a lot of food. Or actually, let me correct that: a lot of food that I’m not used to. I could probably eat more lettuce and tomatoes than the farm could provide me, but some of these other veggies require some serious cooking. I’ve only got a household of 2 people, and one of them isn’t very experimental or much of a veggie lover, really. I think that a full season 1/2 share will have to wait until I’ve got a couple more people in this house.

And like my honeymoon which was in this incredible place, but was in the middle of a natural preserve so there were insects and animals everywhere, this food also needs a warning to the faint of heart. You will receive your food with quite a bit of farm dirt still on it, so it all requires a good wash. Plus, so far I’ve found a spider, a little worm, and a snail that came along with the food. (I can’t believe that they survived in the fridge several days, but they did.) And I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that you won’t occasionally find things. The thing is…these are creatures that live outside, with our food. We’ve become so detached from where our food comes from that we aren’t used to it.

I’ll continue to update the site over the next two weeks as our veggies continue to come in. Please read Tere’s first account on her blog. Any other CSA-ers out there? We’d love to hear what you think!

By the way, the tomatoes were to DIE for! Incredible what real tomatoes taste like. Yum.