CSA Ups and Downs

It seems timely to say something about the risks people take when they join a CSA. (Photo: young apples, www.avalon-acres.com)

A CSA, or Community Shared Agriculture, is a kind of local co-op that provides locally grown produce, meat, and eggs to people in the community. This is the third year we have joined our CSA, and I love it! We go to a nearby church once a week and pick up a box of whatever has been freshly harvested. It's always a surprise to open the box each week! Our CSA also provides fresh fruit, meat, eggs, canned goods, baked goods, and pasta that you can buy in addition to what you get in your box.

The perks of participating in this kind of program are innumerable:

• Knowing where your food comes from
• Helping the local economy
• Being exposed to foods you never would have tried before
• Consuming more veggies in a week than you thought possible. (If you have 3 heads of lettuce, you'll try hard to eat them before they go bad, but who would ever buy 3 heads of lettuce all at once from the store?)
• Supporting small business owners
• Developing a relationship with the people and growers who bring you food each week
• Lowering your carbon footprint by eating foods that come from close by, not 5,000 miles away
• Voting with your dollar for foods that are raised with natural methods, not industrial grade pesticides and genetically modified varieties.
• Etc. etc. etc.

Unfortunately, the downside of all of this home-grown, back to the earth kind of eating is just that: it's about the earth. So in Nashville, where we have just experienced the worst flood in over 100 years, it's impossible to say yet how the local crops will be affected. I've been keeping up with the blog on avalon-acres.com, my CSA, where they have posted pictures and video updates about the flood damage they're experiencing.

I'm sad at the damage they've sustained and the hard work they have ahead of them. I'm also sad (on a MUCH smaller scale) for me and for my possible loss of investment. But that's the way it goes. And hopefully, most of their spring crops have survived, and we'll be even more thankful for them in the end.