Enjoy nature's bounty, week by week: community supported agriculture brings stability to the farm and fresh organic produce to consumers - includes resource list and tips on how to get started

Vegetarian Times, Jan, 1995 by Faith Schantz

Livingston also enjoys the quiet, contemplative time she spends in the Manor Lake fields. "There's something very satisfying about seeing a natural process happening," she says. And she likes knowing that her food has never come into contact with cleansers and pesticides, as may happen with produce that is transported in trucks and sold in a grocery store.

Some shareholders also appreciate having a connection to a farmer. Agnew shareholder Jonathan Stevens, a songwriter, vegetarian and stay-at-home dad, says his participation in CSA relates to his interest in community-oriented economics. The food co-op he belongs to in Portland, Maine, sells some local produce, but "I don't know those farmers," Stevens says. "Even if I don't know Jill very well ... I have far more of a relationship with her than anyone else I might buy food from."

Andrea Huff, a CSA member in Kimberton, Pa., says this connection is especially valuable for children. Huff, who runs the vegetarian lunch program at the Kimberton Waldorf School and teaches vegetarian cooking at a maximum security prison, takes her sons and daughters to the bountiful CSA garden as often as possible. Seeing where their food comes from helps her children understand the growing process. Such visits may also help parents persuade their kids to eat more vegetables; peas and green beans often taste better to children when the vegetables come from "their" farm. (My 7-year-old concurs: "Things that are disgusting and horrible taste good when they come from the farm."

Many shareholders also believe that CSAs help demonstrate the viability of sustainable agriculture. Diana Bryan, a self-employed illustrator and teacher at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, enjoys the produce she receives from her Kingston, N.Y., CSA, but she also regards her participation as a way to show conventional farmers that people are so interested in buying organic produce they're willing to pay for it in advance.

Deborah Gouge, the Kretschmann Farm shareholder who owns the porch where my food is delivered, echoes Bryan's commitment. A vegetarian cooking instructor and a fundraiser for the Hunger Project, Gouge is concerned about the quality of the food in the United States. She's convinced that helping farmers like Don Kretschmann prosper "will make a difference--ultimately--in the availability of organic food throughout this country."

Some CSAs provide other altruistic reasons for joining. The 120 shareholders in the Homeless Garden CSA in Santa Cruz, Calif., support jobs, food and training for homeless people and subsidize shares for six low-income families. The Longview Food Bank Farm CSA in Worthington, Pa., funds organic farmstands in Pittsburgh's economically depressed neighborhoods and community gardens in housing projects.

Ultimately, it's the quality and variety of the produce that lures people to join CSAs and keeps them interested year after year. CSAs can offer foods that would never survive being picked before ripening, trucked long distances and pawed at by shoppers. Delivered to shareholders no more than 48 hours after being harvested, CSA produce is picked ripe, at the height of its flavor and nutritional value.