What's Your Earth Day Resolution?

Happy belated Earth Day!

In lieu of a post yesterday, I thought it would be fun to see what all my loyal readers (I hope that's at least one or two of you out there ;-)) resolved to do yesterday, to save the Earth in the coming year. Sort of an Earth-Day resolution that with any luck will last more than a month.

Post a comment below and let's get this dialogue started!

Everything Old is New Again

I mentioned in the last couple of posts that where I work has a large enough population for our CSA farm to drop off shares, so I thought I’d share (har-har) a little more about where that is. I work for a large public research university in New York, one that is relatively progressive when it comes to promoting sustainability. Take today, for instance. There’s a huge festival on campus celebrating Earth Day, with displays from local schools, vendors of anything from organic food to solar energy system, and tables offering information on green community organizations. Alternative-fuel cars will be there, from a vegetable-powered car to the new Mercedes Smart Car. And there will be music, sunshine, and 70-degree weather, courtesy of climate change.

The hope is that students and citizens from the greater community will come and learn and enjoy and make real change in their lives and towns. This outreach is part of our mandate as a university, and it is part of a greater movement afoot at universities, not just nationally but in the world, to teach sustainability and create change. What good is all the research if it’s not shared? A growing portion of this research is about food and how we interact with the land – but much of it is not new. It is, rather, a relearning of old agricultural methods and native wisdom, repackaged for the modern world. For example, I received this notice last week about a course offering at Arizona State University:

“Arizona State University recently began offering a plant biology internship, ‘The Edible Campus,’ which charges interns with harvesting ASU's fruit and nut trees, maintaining their individual organic garden plots, and marketing the harvested products. The internship program, which meets regularly as a class, aims to connect students to their campus landscape and help students understand the reasoning behind composting and eating locally.”

Everything old is new again…

Getting to Know You (AKA: Thanks for My Food)

Yesterday, I took my elderly mother to a quaint little town next to mine (yes, I know I promised more about CSAs - hang on) to look for a pair of shoes. She has wide feet, so no ordinary store would do. This was a specialty store, and we spent about a 45 minutes there, talking to the proprietor (and his best friend, who was helping out) about shoes...about the weird weather that day...and parents growing older...and a local exhibit on Sicilian immigrants...and how life used to be on the Lower East Side of Manhattan...and shoes. We got to know each other pretty well. The proprietor made a customer card for my mother. She was known. That would not have happened in a chain store.

A CSA is like that. You either travel to the farm every week (because it's local, you are encouraged and welcomed to do that) and interact with the farmers, or you go to a pick-up site, often in someone's garage or a place of work, if it's big enough. Because you've bought a share of the farm, part of it is yours; some farms even require volunteer hours as part of your fee. Any way you slice it, you get to know the farmer, and where the food comes from, and just what it takes to get grown. You rejoice over a bountiful, luscious harvest and bless the good weather that provided it, and lament when it's not so good. You realize just how much work and love and sweat and just plain luck it takes to make food, and it becomes precious. You grow more reverent toward the whole cycle of life that brought you your food, and you see how you and the farmer and the land and the food and the weather are intertwined. All are known, at a more intimate level than you could have imagined.

And this, for many people, after they've experienced it for a season or two, trumps all the other reasons they join a CSA. Who doesn't want to belong, to be recognized, to be part of something bigger than themselves? In the immortal words of the theme song from "Cheers":

" I want to go where people know my name."

Local Harvest's website provides more information on CSAs and where you can find one near you:
http://www.localharvest.org/csa/

Join. You'll be glad you did.

Bright Orange Carrots and Lettuce Like Lagniappe...These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Well, it's been a looong time since I've posted. I know that's breaking rule number one in blogland - mea culpa. I've been scatterbrained lately, for want of a better word. But I recently received a compliment on my back-burnered blog, and that got me in the mood again. Besides, today it's 70 degrees outside and feels like spring. And with spring comes thoughts of...joining the CSA again. And I had to tell you about what a positive experience this was...and will be again this year.

Last year, for the first time, I joined an organic farm offering a Community-Supported Agriculture program, and it was everything I had heard it was. CSAs are farms that ask you to share the cost of their business, in exchange for a share of the crops. You, in effect, own a piece of the land and the crops grown on it.

I'm fortunate that I work at an organization big enough so that it's profitable for the farm to offer a drop-off site there, and close enough to it to make this possible. I split a share with a co-worker, and for about $215, I had fresh produce (and sometimes a fruit or two) from Memorial Day till Thanksgiving. If you do the math, that's less than $10 a day. And the half-share was more than enough to supply me with a week's worth of good healthy greens.

The food was fresh (we received it the day after it had been picked), often lasted for two to three weeks, and the variety was unpredictable: they grow according to the time of year, and pick according to what is ripe that week. The CSA is not for incessant planners who know every meal two weeks in advance. It's a freewheeling adventure in getting to know the local harvest, and I encountered two or three vegetables that I had never heard of, let alone eaten, before. (I joined with a friend who is a gourmet cook, a real "foodie", and even she was surprised.) The CSA provided recipes on its website, so we were never at a loss for what to do with our "exotic" veggies.

Why buy from a CSA when you can go to your local market and buy organic and close-to-fresh? I gave you some good reasons already, but stay tuned for more in the days ahead...