From miaminewtimes.com
Originally published by Miami New Times Sep 12, 2002
©2002 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.
Share in the Organic Farm
Buy shares in an organic collective, and get
homegrown greens in return
By Jen Karetnick
So you've done your reading and decided going organic, or perhaps even
attempting a raw diet, is within the realm of culinary possibility. Maybe
you've been titillated by the specialty produce you've seen served in
restaurants. Or like me, you're for the most part seriously unhappy with
the quality -- not to mention price -- of the fruit and vegetables you can
find in local supermarkets. Aside from growing your own, which requires a
good deal of dedication along with a modicum of expertise, where can you
satisfy your healthier-lifestyle cravings?
My answer in the past has always been, um, dunno. Many of the farms,
orchards, and groves I've written about over the years have catered mostly
to the restaurant trade. Others ship their products out of state. As
consumer wannabes, it's been frustrating to know that the biggest avocados
and juiciest tomatoes have always been just beyond our home-cooking reach.
Fortunately, thanks to a growing sense of kinship that is infusing Florida
City, Homestead, and Redland growers, that's about to change. For the
first time Redland Organics, an offshoot of a Community Supported
Agriculture (CSA) initiative, is offering the public the opportunity to
buy in for the entire harvesting season.
According to the UMass Extension Website, "CSA reflects an innovative and
resourceful strategy to connect local farmers with local consumers;
develop a regional food supply and strong local economy; maintain a sense
of community; encourage land stewardship; and honor the knowledge and
experience of growers and producers working with small to medium farms."
In other words, it's a way of reaching out to and protecting the family
farm. The ideology was born in Japan about three decades ago, when
prospering trade with other nations flooded the grocery store shelves with
imported food items. There a cooperative of women came up with teikei,
which means literally "putting the farmer's face on food."
Okay, so some of us don't like to eat food with a face -- hence
vegetarianism. But the forging of a personal connection between the
growing and purchasing of food became immediately popular, and the teikei
model was subsequently adopted by European, Canadian, and American farmers
who had been feeling increasingly isolated -- the one house where the rest
of the gastronomic neighborhood refused to play. Indian Line Farm in
Massachusetts is given national credit for coming up with the CSA term in
1985, and today there are at least 1000 CSA farms in North America alone.
CSAs operate by allowing consumers to purchase "shares" of a season. In
return for an up-front fee, which covers the growers' costs for seed,
fertilizer, machine maintenance, and labor, supporters receive a
continuous portion of the harvest over the span of the growing season. The
term share is especially appropriate, given that the word denotes a sense
of brotherhood but also connotes the stock market -- an important point
when you realize that as in life, nothing in farming is ever for sure. But
by contributing to CSAs, community members ensure that growers can afford
to err on the side of having a reliable, permanent market. Indeed members
are like bankers, loaning the farmers funds and being repaid by increments
with fresh, seasonal produce. The interest on the loan is paid off in
health benefits.
Unless they're very large endeavors, however, with a variety of crops, CSA
farms can experience difficulty traversing the supply-demand curve. For
one thing not many purported shareholders will be attracted to a six-month
supply of, say, lima beans. And as the season wanes, growers might have a
hard time fulfilling the pre-ordered boxes. Paradise Farm owner Gabriele
Marewski found out last year, when she started a CSA for the first time,
that she simply didn't have enough material. But rather than leave the
dress half-made, she asked neighboring grower Margie Pikarsky of
Picarco/Bee Heaven Farm to pitch in.
Pikarksy saw the wisdom of not only supplementing Marewski's CSA, but in
creating a CSA collective. "There've been a number of organic growers
operating under the radar down here. We'd pretty much reached critical
mass. We got the idea going that we could combine [our efforts] to satisfy
a lot more people." Encouraged by Marewski and another grower, Chris
Worden of Worden Farms -- who had approached Pikarsky about selling his
produce for him at the Pinecrest farmers' market -- she founded the
Redland Organics group. "Now we are finding out we can do better by
banding together," she notes.
Currently a six-farm collective, Redland Organics has just put its 60
shares on sale for the first time ever this past week. Community members
have several options. You can buy in for the season, which runs for 20
weeks, at $460 (plus a $15 one-time membership fee, which puts you on the
e-mail list and invites you to farm-related events). That translates to a
$23 investment and a return of one rather large box of produce per week.
You can also do a trial share, which is $100 for four weeks, after which
you can decide if you'd like to continue; at this point, however, the
weekly price rises to $25. For those who live alone or eat sparingly,
half-shares -- 20 weeks of produce packaged in smaller quantities -- are
being offered at $275.
There are a couple of caveats. Redland Organics doesn't deliver. Community
members have the option of picking up the goods at Bee Heaven or at one of
the farmers' markets -- Coral Gables or Pinecrest -- where Pikarsky sells
to the general public. More convenient, perhaps, is if at least five
community members who live in the same area (Aventura, for instance, or
South Beach) have a point person who will pick up a number of boxes and
distribute them. I'm going to bully -- I mean, rally -- my neighbors into
forming this additional kind of cooperative, so that we can all take turns
in heading south for the winter. (Note that half-shares are available for
pickup at the farm only.)
Then, of course, there's the element of surprise. To paraphrase the
eminently wise mother of Forrest Gump, CSAs are like a box of chocolates.
You never know what you're going to get: avocados and edible flowers from
Bee Heaven Farm; heirloom tomatoes and peppers from Evertrue Farm; mamey
and sapote from Health and Happiness Farm; micro-greens and sprouts from
Paradise Farm; longans and lychees from Saw Mill Farm; and broccoli and
cilantro from Worden Farm, to name only a few of the dozens of
possibilities. Pikarsky has already worked out some of the possible kinks.
"I've budgeted a certain amount so that I will always get something from
someone, and everyone will have a chance to participate," she guarantees.
Still it's wise to heed the Redland Organics brochure: "We are not a
supermarket! The vegetables that you find in your box are what we are
harvesting at that time, and you will not be able to pick and choose as in
a market.... Part of the commitment is to learn to eat what is in season
in your area."
But even such stipulations have upsides, it seems. You can note
preferences on a list that you submit along with your application form
(see www.redlandorganics.com/CSAapp.htm) by rating your produce -- a "4"
means you'd like to see cucumbers in your box every week, a "1" indicates
that you don't even know what sweet luffa is. You can also expect some
consistency in terms of category. Pikarsky says, "I always include some
sort of green, salad makings, and an herb in each box, in addition to
whatever else is in season." Finally, if you pick up your veggies at the
farm, you can swap at an exchange table if you really can't bear to bring
home the daikon, and you can buy extra of whatever crop is in surplus
while you're there.
As added incentive for learning to eat seasonally, from time to time the
box will include recipes and tips on cooking unfamiliar vegetables. As far
as a school of thought goes, the CSA/Redland Organics seems to be one in
the making, and this first year will no doubt be a time for
experimentation and education on the part of both growers and community
members. But at least the curriculum promises to be tasty.