Discover your inner farmer next season

This piece was originally published in the News & Record on November 1, 2006. For more information on Farmers' Markets and CSA, go to my homepage.

It seems like just weeks ago that I was eagerly anticipating the spring revitalization of the Greensboro Farmers’ Curb Market: the return of Goat Lady Dairy chevre at the end of their kidding season, spring salad greens, green tomatoes, the first strawberries and the slow, steady filling of the aisles with familiar faces, the subculture of local food enthusiasts.

But October is over; the Market vendors will shift from predominately farmers to predominately craftspeople until the winter holidays have passed. Then the Market will become truly sparse through the coldest months.

The end of the growing season is even more jarring than usual for my husband and me. This was our first year participating in a CSA, or Consumer Supported Agriculture.

The particulars of CSA programs vary by farmer; some expect members to spend a set time working at the farm, others expect only a monetary buy-in. In exchange, members get a share of the farm’s freshest goods, usually vegetables but sometimes meats or dairy depending on the farm. More than a dozen small farms in North Carolina alone offer CSAs.

We chose to join Handance Farm’s CSA in large part because I have more than a decade of history with the farmers, Pat and Brian Bush. I met Pat in the early-90s when she ran the kitchen at Camp Carefree and I volunteered there a few days a week, making chocolate pudding topped with cooking crumb “dirt” and gummy worms, and gazpacho that only the staff would eat.

It wasn’t until last year, though, that I rediscovered the Greensboro Farmers’ Curb Market, reconnected with the Bushes and learned about their CSA which is filled with the heirloom organic veggies they so carefully cultivate.

The Bushes ask for only a monetary buy-in; they offer farm work opportunities but do not require it. The CSA begins its cycle in January, when members reserve their spot by sending in a check for $320. This past year, pre-season monies allowed Pat and Brian to purchase a much needed and hard to find mulch spreader; you can imagine the added efficiency when you realize that prior to this purchase, they hauled mulch by the bucket-load down every long row.

We started picking up our bags in May – reused paper grocery bags, packed with kale, beets, tomatoes, eggplant… The contents changed by the week and though seasonality is a predictor of what we would get, there was still the element of surprise and the culinary adventure of learning how to use a half-dozen varieties of greens and keeping delicata squash interesting for the fourth week in a row.

In addition to all the farm-fresh produce that two people could eat in a week (and often more), Pat and Brian also included a paragraph summary of that week on the farm. It’s not weeding a bed of garlic, but for non-farmers it offers a slightly closer connection to the land, something we often forget in the grocery stores where even our potatoes are immaculately dirt-free and every apple looks shiny and identical.

Over the winter, I will reacquaint myself with the produce people at the grocery store, who I now only see on my way to the coffee aisle. My husband and I will eat vegetables that have traveled more miles from farm to our kitchen than we will have traveled all year. And we will eagerly anticipate next May when our first CSA bag offers more treasures unearthed from the North Carolina clay.