Want a great way to stay healthy, know what you're eating and support a locally sustainable economy? Check out community supported agriculture (CSA) programs at a family farm near you. Most locally owned farms provide CSA programs as a way for the community to purchase a "share" of their crops each year for a modest price. These agriculture shares are picked fresh every week during the local growing season (July through October on the Front Range - 16 weeks) and are made available either at the farm or farm's booth at local farmers' markets.
Living on the Front Range of Colorado gives us a unique opportunity to stay in touch with our agricultural roots. Over the past 50 years, our lives have been slowly removed from the food processing and agriculture industry, which makes it difficult to remember where our food really comes from. Utilizing a local CSA for your summer and winter vegetables and fruit is a great way to reconnect with the food that you're eating, create seasonal food dishes and reduce your overall carbon footprint by reducing food transportation.
We all know that a garden-fresh tomato tastes completely different from a store-bought tomato. There are many reasons for this (which I will not go into detail here), but nonetheless, there is a noticeable difference. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to have that garden-fresh taste and be able to support local agriculture without having to grow vegetables and fruit yourself? Enter the CSA programs of local farmers.
There are many CSAs to choose from on the Front Range. Near Boulder, there are Miller Farms, Cure Organic Farm and Pachamama Farms. These farms offer CSA programs and will deliver to local farmers markets (for an additional fee). Colorado State University in Fort Collins even has their own CSA.
What are the benefits of a buying your food from a CSA? Here are a few:
- Supporting a locally sustainable economy by reducing carbon footprint of food transportation.
- Food simply tastes better when it is picked that day and grown using organic and bio-diverse methods.
- Food grown using organically and bio-diverse methods use no fertilizer (such as Ammonia Nitrate), which can run-off and contributes to water and ground pollution. Consult with your local farm to see how it is they "fix" the nitrogen problem (Wikipedia entry and another good entry). A bio-diverse farm will use legumes (beans) to fix and industrial farms will use ammonia nitrate.
- You get to meet and talk to the people producing your food, ask them questions and be assured your food is grown in a manner that meets your standards.
- Farms are fun for children. Every week you get to take a "Farm Trip" to get the food that you're going to eat for the week.
It is easy to pay less and less attention to the food we are eating and more and more to the mass marketing and push behind technology (and other "stuff"). I find this concerning as our national health expenses increases exponentially year to year due to obesity and heart disease. If we get back to the basics - spend a little less on that new cell phone and a little more on the food we eat - we can make huge strides to not only improve our local economy but increase our happiness and general well-being.
If you are interested in reading more on this subject, I recommend the following:
- The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
- Eating Between the Lines by Kimberly Lord Stewart
- http://polyfacefarms.com/
