Community Supported Agriculture – A Model for Local Economies

By: Hannah Breckbill, Humble Hands Harvest
As a heady teenager in Lincoln, Nebraska, I spent my spare time working up math problems, playing violin, studying for the academic decathlon, and weeding or sifting soil or digging potatoes at my mentor Ruth’s CSA vegetable farm. It was a strange combination of things, but I’m so glad that I had a chance to be out of my head and relating to the physical world, at least some of the time. Ruth fed me homemade brownies and lemon curd, helped me get over my fear of flying exoskeletons by putting me to work in a greenhouse full of grasshoppers, and provided my family with a pile of vegetables every week through the growing season.
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has been a fixture in my life ever since I was conscious of where food came from. It just made sense. My parents wanted Ruth’s vegetables in their kitchen. So they paid for the season in the early spring, and then Ruth dropped off a box for us every week all summer long. It’s kind of like getting a subscription of in-season, local, organic vegetables. My dad, the grocery-shopper and routine-lover of our household, was thrown for a bit of a loop, having to use vegetables other than frozen peas. My mom, on the other hand, loved it. She got to improvise meals with whatever showed up, and she could glean ideas from Ruth’s weekly newsletter.
It’s remarkable that the brainy kid that I was now works mostly with her body and heart (blame it on Ruth), but that’s a story for another time. Today, I’m excited to tell you that there are 3 vegetable CSAs in Decorah! The model of getting food that was already in place when I was growing up is still going strong and is still the most direct and mutually-supportive connection you can have with your farmers, your food, and the land.
CSA shares have been available in the Decorah area since the late 1990s from a number of different farms. Our models are continually improving. Nowadays your vegetable farmers strive to provide clean, beautiful, diverse and abundant produce to their most important customers—the CSA members who invest in the farm at the beginning of the season, showing their commitment to and respect for the farmers’ work.
Canoe Creek Produce (canoecreekproduce.com), Humble Hands Harvest (humblehandsharvest.com), and Patchwork Green Farm (patchworkgreen.com) are all CSA vegetable farms within 10 miles of Decorah. Our vegetables are all available at the Winneshiek Farmers Market, in the Co-op, and at other local institutions, but most importantly, we all have CSA market shares for sale right now!
A market share is a CSA in that the eaters can invest in their farm at the beginning of the season, but it offers more choice than a standard boxed share. Essentially, you get credit at the farm’s market stand to use whenever you want over the course of the season (the Winneshiek Farmer’s Market is open Wednesdays 3-6 and Saturdays 8-11, May through October), in a cash-free transaction. You can enjoy what is coming out of the field that week, exactly when you want it and as much as you want, plus your farmers have the financial support they need at the right time to get the season started.
Humble Hands Harvest also has traditional boxed CSA shares. We bring the boxes to the farmer’s market for 20 weeks, June through October. We curate the boxes with what we’re most excited about, what is newly in season, and what is most abundant at that moment. We make sure to have a cohesive selection of produce and we send out a newsletter alongside your box every week to make sure you have a connection to the goings-on at the farm as well as suggestions for how to eat the vegetables. Kristin Eggen, a CSA member, says, “I love the variety. Opening a CSA box every week is like unwrapping a gift—exciting and delightful! I also love supporting people who are working hard to bring local food to our bellies and sustainable practices to our earth.”
Your participation in a CSA makes it economically and socially possible for your farmers to grow your food, to sustain their businesses, and to train and empower a new generation of land stewards so that the future people in this place can keep eating. Big kudos to all you local eaters. We need you for the world we’re building.