Share Week 19

Tomatoes, tomatillos, eggplant, carrots, Daikon or Black Spanish radish, sweet peppers, onion, leek, beets, radishes, lettuce, Swiss chard, Tat Soi or Bok Choi, parsley

Note from Mary Ann

A Small Victory for Consumers

Last Tuesday Congress included in the $700,000,000,000 rescue package a mandate that all food must have a "Country of Origin Label" (COOL).  We have been fighting for years to know where our food comes from.  Too bad they didn't require labeling for genetically modified foods as well.  We still have a ways to go to defend our right to know.

-Mary Ann Ihm

Newsletter Week 19

We hope you've enjoyed the season thus far.  Only six more weeks to go!  Our last deliveries will be the week of November 10--write it in your calendars. 

The CSA concept developed in Europe and especially Japan in the last century, in response to the rise of industrial farming.  Japanese food contamination in the early part of the century prompted a surge in the demand for farm fresh organic food--food grown locally through community supported programs.  Today 22% of all Japanese households participate in a Community Supported Agriculture program.

While food contamination seems to be a growing concern here in the U.S., the goals of CSA have broadened beyond quality concerns.  Many of you who replied to our survey (keep them coming!) expressed a desire to support small local farms.  Viable and local, human-scaled agriculture is certainly a goal, as is the desire to make this agriculture fair and non-exploitative for both natural and human resources.  Mostly though, CSA--especially at Wellspring--seeks to foster connections and create community between the producers of food and those who consume it.

Early CSA farms in the U.S. were started by a "core group" of people committed to these ideals.  Typically they sought out a farmer to grow for them and then arranged the details (deliveries, finances, communication among shareholders) on their own.  In the coming year I'd like to gather together a "core group" of individuals interested in helping out in some way, in being more than just a consumer.  Some jobs that come to mind are the coordination of the "Community Share" program, which has been a huge success and which we hope to expand next season.  We'd love to have help with our spring sign-ups, as it's difficult to field questions from prospective shareholders while in the greenhouse trying to start all the seedlings for the year.  These are just a few of the jobs we could use help with.  If this type of commitment interest you, please contact me (Jeff) sometime in the coming months: jschreib26@yahoo.com

Thank you all for your commitment to local, sustainable agriculture!

-Jeff Schreiber, Farm Manager

Share Week 18

Catching up soon

Newsletter Week 18

Will catch up soon, I hope

Share Week 17

Tomatoes, eggplant, carrots, swiss chard, broccoli, sweet peppers, Asian greens salad mix, onion, melon, potatoes, kohlrabi, Daikon radish, turnips, basil and parsley.

Newsletter Week 17

On the day of this writing, it has officially become Autumn.  Soon there will be that cool bite in the milky air and the sky will be filled with the treetops' fireworks of red and yellow.  It's that transition time when your CSA boxes are full of early Fall Harvest treats and last of the summer goodies.  It's a time for new beginnings and tying up loose ends.

Part of the new beginnings for this year in particular is that of election time.  In November we will have a new president elect.  A key issue for many people that has had a looming presence over the election this year has been that of climate change.  How can we alleviate our dependence on fossil fuel?  What alternative forms of energy are best to invest in?  By now, many of us know it is not just enough to screw in CFL light bulbs.  We need to do more than that, and a big issue people need to talk more about in terms of combating climate change is food.  What we choose to eat is every bit a part of fighting climate change as the daily bike ride to work.

According to the Pew Center for Global Climate Change, one-third of the world's human made greenhouse gas emissions stems from food and agriculture.  This includes industrial farms' pesticides, herbicides, and factory farm runoff.  Even many packaged "organic" foods are part of the culprit.  How much energy did it take to process that organic General Mills' cereal, and how long did it take to assemble that lengthy list of ingredients into one final product?

Eating local and whole foods is a crucial way of fighting climate change.  For many of us, by being raised on a steady diet of fossil fueled food and media-driven images telling us what we want to eat, the consumption of meals throughout the years has been a confusing journey.  But the vegetables in your CSA box are not only local and grown organically, they're also 100% whole.  So rest assured: there is no maltodextin in your kohlrabi, nor is there any dextrose in your   tomatoes.  What you have in your box has not been processed and has never seen the light of a factory's interior.  Its purity intact, there is no energy required to develop such food into a final food "product," unless you count the energy of one of our hands picking it from the vine/ snipping it from the plant/ pulling it from the earth.

How does one begin to counter our damaging mainstream food system?  Joining a CSA is a great start, but don't stop there: shop at your local farmers' market.  Rip up your lawn and grow your own mini-farm or get a plot at a community garden.  If you eat meat (or cheese or eggs), buy locally-raised, grass-finished meat from family farms.  Minimize the amount of frozen food that you buy in cardboard boxes with huge paragraphs of ingredients.  Preserve your CSA or garden veggies for the winter.  Also, compost your kitchen scraps instead of just throwing them out in the garbage; the food that ends up in landfills is a big emitter of greenhouse gases.  

These food choices are not just for personal health's sake, but for the planet's health as well.  There are many things we can do and need to do about climate change.  Food choices are just the tip of the melting iceberg.  And, on the brighter side of things, it's also a delicious starting point.

-Alison Parker