If you haven’t heard of the 100-Mile Diet yet or the new book that goes along with it, Plenty…then definitely go snooping around. Here’s the basic, important, piece: almost every ingredient on your plate has travelled at least 1500 miles to get there. So, it doesn’t taste as fresh, and has a huge carbon footprint. And I’m not even going to talk about the pesticides.

There are other options, however. Down in the Redlands there are several groups of people that work very hard every day in order to be able to provide us with delicious, fresh, organic food. Not only do they sell at the farmers markets in late winter, but they have a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).

Through the Redland Organics CSA, you can order a subscription for an entire season of local veggies. You’ll pick them up at a location near you each Saturday morning from mid-November until the beginning of April.

You can pay $600 for a full share for those 20 weeks of food ($30 a week and read: a TON of food) or $360 for a half share (also, lots of food). (Pictured: a typical March full share) Deposits for next year need to be in place by September 1, but move quickly as the shares can sell out before that. 

If you read my post from last year’s experience (Read all of Tere’s, too: Week 1, Week 2, & Week 4), you’ll see that both Tere & I had some trouble getting accustomed to this way of eating. Six months later, however, I’m missing this fresh, delicious, and healthy local food.

I crave the Asian mix that I didn’t know how to eat. A reader told me: simply eat it as a salad with some bleu cheese dressing. How I think about that delicious flavor - edible flowers & all. You may not know what every veggie is each week, but they’ll tell you.

It’s an experience, it’s good for the environment, your body, and the local farmers. Give it a shot! 

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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.

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The time is now to become part of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). The basic set up of a CSA means that you pay up front for a season’s worth of produce, grown locally and usually organically. CSA’s allow you to know where your food is coming from. The money that you pay upfront for your share of the harvest helps the farmer cover the necessary costs. As a member of a CSA, you are sharing the risk with the farmer…you share the harvest, however if something damages the crops (disease, weather), you are agreeing to take the loss with the farmer.

Redland Organics is our local CSA. They are currently accepting applications for this coming season. The food is grown in Homestead, but they have various pick-up points in Miami-Dade & Broward counties. There are 20 pick-up dates in a season, usually on Saturday.

A full-share is $580 ($29/week) for the season, a half-share is $350 ($17.50/week). A 4-week January trial full-share is $150. You may also add an egg full-share (dozen/week) for $95 or half-share (1/2 dozen/week) for $53 (local eggs!!).

Find out much more: CSA Brochure, FAQs, Member Comments, Application

Located in SW Florida? You have a CSA, too! Worden Farm.

Update: Avocados are ready now! Order yours today.

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Every once in a while I write a post and I mention how important local food is to me. And then I never say another word. Well, here we go, starting the conversation. This has been a tough one for me to start writing about, because for me it is so big and complex, I didn’t know where to start.

So today I’ll start with the thing that inspired me to do more and more research on the topic, the 100 Mile Diet. This diet, started by two crazy Canadians last year, is based on the following:

When the average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has typically traveled at least 1,500 miles from farm to plate. That’s a total disconnection from where our food is coming from. What would it be like to eat locally for one year? We drew a 100-mile circle around our home in Vancouver, Canada. The 100-Mile Diet was born.

These two people, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, started a blog to share their experiences, which became referenced all over the web. Still not convinced? They’ve got 13 Reasons to Eat Locally.

So, could one person, or a group of people, successfully eat on the 100 mile diet from Miami? That would get you to about Naples on the east coast, Stuart to the north, almost to Key West in the south, and touching the edge of Grand Bahama. Plus a whole lot of swamp and ocean.

I’d love to start a list soon of all of the food that you can buy or grow locally, seasons available, etc., in order to really find a way to make this feasible. Additionally, I’d like to add restaurants that utilize locally grown food in their menus. If anyone has information or resources, please let me know.

My gut tells me: Easier: local fish, fruit, veggies (depending on season), herbs. Harder: milk, chicken, eggs, meat, sugar. Much harder: flour, rice.

We live in an area without a winter, which means we should be better off…although from what I understand from reading about farming, we seem to have a short growing season, with crops from January-April. Farmers markets are many times full of products that come in from all over the country and the world, which doesn’t make any sense at all to me.

In the future I want to use this as a stepping stone to talk about Community Supported Agriculture in Miami, Florida and also Community Gardens.

Could you do the 100-mile diet for a month, a week, a day? Could I? I hope someday, but I need to figure out where to start, first.

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Today’s Carnival of the Green is located at GreenThinkers.

Powering Down has a long but interesting post about agriculture & petroleum. Suggestions at end of the article: educate yourself (on issues, don’t just listen to what people tell you), grow your own food, start a community garden, support local farmers, and don’t rely on others to provide you with your basic needs.

Simply in Season is a blog I hadn’t seen yet, promoting eating local food in season. I’d love to hear from readers on this…it is an interest of mine that I’m not sure if I share with other Miamians.

We are pointed to the downsides of bamboo, a traditionally very "green" resource, by commonground.

I was really disappointed to find out that a couple of Floridians shot two hawks last week because they were bothering the golf course residents.

These are just a few of the entries, you can see all of them here.

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