Time to Join a CSA (and how to avoid the Dreaded Fake CSA)

Now is the time to buy a CSA share. If you wait much longer most farms will be sold out.

Here at Boulder Belt Eco-Farm in SW Ohio we have a farm Share Initiative or FSI. We call it that because around here and in all Southern States, CSA means Confederate States of America to all the non foodie locavore types (which sadly out number us local foodies about 20 to 1) but it is a CSA and it is our farm's 14th year for CSA (we were one of the first in Ohio, being the trailblazers that we are). And this year we will likely sell out of shares before mid April as we have been getting a super response to our CSA this season and have already sold almost half our shares for the year.

Last year we did not fill up at all and had fewer shares all season than we do at this point 2 months before the season starts. The year before we sold lots of shares but had no members from 2009 join for the 2010 season. This year over 75% of last years' members rejoined and we already have 4 new members and several others sitting on the fence over joining and we get emails and phone calls about our FSI program nearly every day.

If you want to learn more about our program simply click on the photo of the CSA share to the left of this post and you will be taken to our FSI page where you can learn all about our program and what we put into our shares ever week as well as costs and the membership options (we have several).

Unlike many "CSA's" around here we are the real thing. There are more and more fake CSA's out there. These are basically brokers posing as CSA's. They take money and deliver boxes of food like a CSA but unlike a real CSA, while there is usually local farms involved there is never a farmer that is involved weekly with the members as these places simply buy from farms around the region as does any health food store or grocery, the members do not take on the risk of farming with the growers. With these places if a crop fails they just find another source for the food and the members are none the wiser and have missed out on a great teachable moment.

Risk sounds scary but is it very important to the CSA deal and 9.9 times out of 10 the risk is minimal to non existent-you may get fewer veggies in your share but you will get something and it will be enough to make a meal. But know there are risks such a bad hail storms, tornadoes, flood, swarms of locusts that can take out a season's crop. And know that while the member may be out several hundred dollars the farmer may well be out of a job and a place to live. And this is something our industrial food system has completely removed through farm subsidies, shipping in food from around the globe and the commodities market. And it is something that Fake CSA remove as well, they generally get their food from the same system as any grocery store, while touting they have local food. But the local foods rarely make up more than 50% of the share (and that abundance local food is only there a few months a year and the rest of the year less than 15% of the food is local). If you see a CSA that offers bananas in Ohio that is a fake CSA. It is really just a food broker in green locavore clothing, don't drink their kool aid. Instead do some homework and go for the real thing, a CSA that is farmer driven, gets all their food locally (ideally from their farm but sometimes you need to buy from other local farms, we do for sweet corn as we do not have the room or desire to grow enough sweet corn for our members).

We have had our FSI impacted by these fake CSA here in the greater Miami Valley the past couple of years but it seems this year more people have a clue and are turning to real CSA's over the brokers and resellers.

And hey, if you are in the greater Dayton/Cincy area and are looking for a CSA send us an email as we still have some openings left in our 2011 season

How To Find real Food at a Super Market

This is a fun little article  How to Find real Food at the Super Market Flow Chart
Of course if you shop our farm, join our CSA, shop at a farmers market (but stay away from the processed foods), grow your own you would not need this flow chart. but since the vast majority of us living in the modern western world do indeed make use of the industrial food stream at least periodically this is good (and rather entertaining) information to have.

ON S 510

http://sustainableagriculture.net/bl...m_medium=email

Lots of good information here. Nice remedy to all the misleading freaked out anti SB 510 emails floating about. And this does not say there are not problems with these bills (House and Senate) as there are many things to be concerned about but losing backyard gardens or Organics are not some of them.

The exemptions of small farms is well explained and critiqued.

Well worth reading if you raise or eat food.

Buy stuff

You may have noticed that there are ads on this blog. These are there in order to generate money to make it somewhat worth my while to keep updating the blog. There are two kinds of ads Google Adsense which I very little control over (though I was able to block all Monsanto ads from showing up on this blog, much to the dismay of the people at Google who tell me how to best get people to click on the ads here and have written me many many notes telling me I am not a great capitalist because I block certain corporations from appearing here. Too bad, I have standards that are not negotiable)

I also have products from Amazon that I am selling through this site. These, unlike the Google Adsense, I have full control over which items will appear on this blog. And today I updated my offerings to include non book items for the first time.

There are now 3 non book items
Food Inc-this is a must see film if you do any eating at all in this modern world. For the savvy locavore there will not be much new (though I was still shocked by a lot of this film because you so seldom see graphic images of our industrial food stream). This movie was nominated for a 2010 Academy Award, BTW

Zyliss Salad Spinner-if you are getting into eating locally or just love salads your kitchen is not complete without a salad spinner. I use mine many times a day. It is a Zyliss spinner that is at least 12 years old and still going strong. It is not like the model listed here as mine has a pull string (which they do not seem to make any longer-Amazon does list the pull string type as out of stock and not getting any more)

Excalibur Food Dehydrator-this is the BMW of dehydrators. This model is their largest and will do around a 1/2 bushel of food. I use mine heavily and love the results. I highly recommend this product

A note on some of the the books
The Organic Farmer's Business Handbook is excellent, I have a copy and have learned much. If you are a farmer and want to be truly profitable get this book and make a better living you need this book in your library. I give this a hearty thumbs up

The New Organic Grower Another excellent book, a classic on how to set up and run a small diversified organic farm. Eliot Coleman is a master market gardener and a really good writer. this book, more than any other got us up and running and we still refer to it a lot. If you are a market gardener or serious organic gardener this book should be in your library

Buy Buy American Pie

Small Farms vs Industrial Farms

For years I have read the argument that Industrial farms are the most efficient way to produce food. That compared to, say 75 years ago a farm could produce food for 5 people, today's farms produce food to feed 125 per farm. That does sound good but I have noticed that this number may not be as good as it sounds

The farms of yesterday were diversified, smaller and I believe fed far more than 5 people as these farms did support the families living on them. And these families averaged around 8 people, not 5. So right there I wonder where these number are coming from? Are they just arbitrary pulled from someone's butt? (you would be surprised how often that happens-the 3 year transition period before a farm is certified organic is one such arbitrary number and really means nothing as it really takes 7 to 15 years to get soils in organic shape, especially if they were subject to conventional/chemical farm management) or did someone do some real research and find that the farms on pre WWII really did feed only 5 people?

I am pretty convinced that these numbers have been hatched by proponents of the Green Revolution and are based on nothing of substance. I say this because I have been running these numbers in my head and what I come up with is that small diversified farms feed more people per acre than the big "efficient" Industrial farms.

For example, lets say a pre WWII farm (that feeds only 5 people) is 100 acres (which is pretty much the average size of farms at this time). Now the modern mono-cropped farm of 4000 acres (pretty much the average size of a modern farm or the combination of all rented and owned land that a Midwestern farmer will work) feeds 125 people. pretty good right? A lot more people than that paltry 5 of the old fashioned diversified farm.

Ah but lets look at how many people per acre these farms are feeding. if we extrapolate the numbers we see that perhaps the industrial mono-cropped does not produce as much per acre as a small diversified farm. For if a 100 acre farm can produce enough food to feed 5 people 40 of those farms would produce enough to feed 200. I believe 200 is greater than 125 and thus we see that smaller diversified farms can indeed outproduce the big industrial mono-cropped farms

Food Inc

This is a must see film for anyone who eats food in the United States (which is everyone). I have not been able to get to any public screenings of this film but a few days ago i was perusing the Millions Against Monsanto Facebook page and found a link that took me to a site that allows you to watch a fairly low quality copy of the movie for free.

So I took 94 minutes out of my life to watch the movie and I was rather shocked by it. And this surprised me as I have been well aware of what is happening to our food system for the past 15 to 20 years which has lead me to eat a basically local diet of food produced by people I know personally. I figured I would not learn much from this film. I was wrong, I learned several new things about our food system and they were not good things to learn.

And if I got new things from this movie that means that 99% of the people out there will have a truly eye opening experience

Link to movie here "enjoy"