Quiz: Are You Ready to CSA Farm Share?
CSA farm shares are a staple for many local, small farms in the US. The customer pays upfront for a share of the vegetables the farm will produce throughout the growing season (18 weeks of vegetables in Missoula). The early payment enables each farmer to cover early season costs required to raise healthy vegetables, including purchasing seeds, growing supplies, and making equipment repairs. For Garden City Harvest, who runs 4 farms, 10 community gardens, and 8 school gardens along with a wheelbarrow load of educational programming to boot, CSA farm shares provide an earned income stream that keeps our organization ticking in a big way. As a CSA farm share member, you buy into the abundance, and sometimes the shortfalls, of the year’s harvest.
However, CSA farm shares take work from their members — as you will read below. . . If that isn’t’ for you, then donate instead! The following questions will help you figure out if you are ready for the CSA farm share challenge. . .
1. Is it important to know your farm and farmer?
"Loved learning to cook with fennel and making friendships with the Garden City Harvest staff."
-CSA Customer
It has to be important to know your farmer, because with a Garden City Harvest CSA, we ask you to pick up your food once a week at your farm.
We have 4 farms within the city limits (making it as local as you can get!). You make a special trip to pick up your veggies each week between 4:30 and 6:30 pm (you get to pick Monday or Thursday).
It is a powerful thing, coming to the farm once a week to be among the growing things, to sink your teeth into a carrot, to pick your own flowers, to have that moment of zen offered just off some of the busiest streets of Missoula. But it does require an investment of time, and that's not for everyone.
It is also super cool that your food was grown right here, in Missoula. It doesn’t get much more local than that! Did someone say reducing your carbon footprint?!? Totes my goats!
If coming to the farm each week between 4:30 and 6:30 pm feels like it will make you crazy, it probably will. The pay off has to be worth it for you. One of the most common struggles from new CSA members is that the pick up window isn't long enough or they forget.
Here’s the reason we keep our pickups on the farm:
We want to see you. We believe you have an important part to play in our farm community. We hear from our members that the connection to the farm is important to them, too. They tell us they have a sense of ownership and connection to their food because they come to the farm. And we have a connection to who we are growing for.
You choose your veggies, you pack your bags/coolers/bike carriers. We don't pre-pack a box for you. We let you decide on your favorite tomato, your handful of beans. But it is a bit more involved than grabbing a box of food and zooming to the next errand.
If you are cool with coming to the farm for our veggies each week, or if that excites you (even better!) then you have your first reason to try us out!
2. Do you love fresh, high quality food?
"Our favorite parts of the CSA are: 1) better tasting veggies than I get at the store (even the gourmet stores);
2) the variety of veggies, so I could try new ones but also have my faves;
3) everything looked so beautiful. Just looking at my bag on my counter made me happy." -CSA Customer
Do you taste the lackluster flavor in zucchini, cauliflower, or tomatoes that have traveled a long way to your plate?
Our member surveys tell us that one of the most important things about our food is that it is high quality and great tasting. This is one of the highlights they name in their surveys year after year.
We offer a lot of food in our shares, and as much variety as our climate allows. We grow heirlooms and a diversity of varieties, we save seed, we hand-weed, we know our plants. We follow our local homegrown guidelines (similar or better than organic certification). We know and respect the land that gives us our food. We also harvest veggies for your CSA that very same day or the day before, at their height of their freshness. This means a quality product.
If food quality is a top priority for you, then you have another great reason to try us out.
3. Is it fun to try new foods? Everyday. All summer.
We grow staples (carrots, onions, tomatoes) but we also give the forgotten veggies a chance! Kohlrabi (left) is a great example. Once you incorporate it into your cooking, you will wonder how you ever lived without it.
Many varieties of veggies will be included in your weekly share. Kohlrabi, salad turnips, rutabaga, bok choy, a crazy amount of greens in the beginning of the season, and an abundance of root veggies and winter squash at the end. This is what it means to eat seasonally. This is different than how many of us have ever cooked before.
Here's the thing: we will give you new veggies to try. We won't leave you hanging on what to do with them. The Real Dirt will be there week by week to help you out, and so will our farmers who've been cooking seasonally for years. We have a private Facebook group and a growing playlist of videos for you to learn how to handle and cook with this abundance. Plus, our farmers and your fellow members love to tell you about their favorite recipes.
We also love to hear from you -- share your recipes with us online with The Real Dirt or directly with our farmers.
One of our customers said that her favorite part of the CSA was: "Picking up a load of fresh food every week and figuring out what to do with it."
That's the attitude!
If you feel like you are ready to take on the abundance challenge? Then you can say yes to this question!
4. Are you a control freak when it comes to meal planning?
"My favorite part of this season was the educational aspects for our kids (and, to be honest, us parents, too)." -CSA Customer
Know yourself. If you want yellow onions and there are only scallions that week, if you wanted to make that new roasted cauliflower recipe, but that week there’s no cauliflower, will it ruin everything?
Our biggest complaints each year is that a member didn't get enough of one thing, and got too much of something else.
But some members love the structure it lends: "It is an excellent source of healthy, consistent, local vegetables. After being a member for several years, it is routine and a great way for my family to meal plan and cook healthy foods."
Our CSA members are somewhat spontaneous with their food planning. That might mean doing meal planning on a Monday (or Thursday night), after you get your CSA box. That might mean modifying a recipe for a few less of one veggie and a few more of another. That might mean getting creative when you get two ears of corn (and your corn loving family is made up of four people) and cutting the kernels into a salad instead of serving on the cob.
That also might mean tuning into The Real Dirt, where we will post your veggies and ideas for what to do with them. Ask your fellow CSA members what they’re doing on the private Facebook group!
In short, if you can learn to flex, or already have some spontaneity in your food life, and want to learn along the way, you're ready to rock with this CSA. (I'm a poet, and I didn't even know it!)
5. Do you have the patience to learn to eat seasonally?
“So many - the excitement of discovering new-to-me produce, the feeling that my family was eating healthier than we've probably ever eaten before.”
-CSA member
Seasonal eating takes practice.
So what does that look like?
It might mean that you had a late work meeting, you're starving, and get take out on the way home because, well, reality. Or the kids have a swimming meet over a weekend and there’s no way you’re bringing a cooler full of veggies. And so, the veggies molder in the fridge.
That, dear friends, is why we have compost piles.
It is also why learning to prep ahead so that you can come home and throw together a salad or roast some veggies that you’ve pre-chopped.
The reality is that it takes several seasons to learn to eat nimbly. To triage the quick-to-rot veggies, know your family's eating habits and what you might want to store in the freezer for the long haul vs. eat right away. Finding your food routine.
Again, we're here to help. We'll give you guidance.
But you have to be willing to go on this journey with us. And be okay with a few rotten bags of veggies in the beginning. There's no guilt here!
6. Do you believe in Garden City Harvest’s work?
“We moved toward the end of the season and the kids insisted that we all go to pick up our share, say goodbye to our farmer and cut flowers one last time together. The CSA became synonymous with everything good about Missoula for us.”
Donors and members help our farms grow tons (literally!) of food for places like the Missoula Food Bank, Poverello Center, and all the Youth Homes in Missoula (and many other places, as well). This produce also goes to seniors on fixed incomes. We employ at-risk teens on the farm. We use the process as a learning experience for Kindergartners through college seniors.
And our farms are just one element of what we do.
We also have 10 community gardens where over 400 people grow their own food, share resources, and garden in together.
Our Farm to School program teaches food education year round with school gardens and educational field trips and even send farmers into school classrooms all winter long. That reaches over 6,000 students in Missoula.
If this sounds like an effort you’d like to be a part of, then there’s another reason to join us.
Worried About Climate Change?
“Walking the dogs from home to the farm to pick up our local fresh veggies - felt good to have zero carbon foot print food - lots of warm fuzzy feelings around abundance and gratitude.”
- CSA Member
This is the easiest one to answer, I know. But it is a great thing about being a CSA member, so we had to include it!
Garden City Harvest’s four farms are in the city limits of Missoula. You can ride your bike to your pickup. We grow without synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. We weed by hand a lot more than we tractor. We cultivate bees and other beneficial insects. We cultivate the soil. We care for the land. This is some of the lowest impact food you can get your hands on.
The food industry contributes to 15% of our carbon emissions, and contributes another 15 - 18% of warming atmospheric gasses due to deforestation caused by agriculture worldwide.
Montana used to get around 50% of our food from our state. Missoula used to get around 90% of the food from our city.
If you want to join us in changing those percentages, here’s your chance!
So, what do you think?
We would love to welcome you to one of our four farms this summer, to add to a pretty special community of foodies and friends. We'll teach each other. We'll share a collective food story: one of growing, one of cooking, and one of eating together around the table.
If you want join a CSA to support Garden City Harvest, but decide a CSA share is not for you, might we suggest making a donation? If you love what we do, you'll make just as big an impact by supporting us in that way. Donors are huge supporters, too.