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.