[RPMcMurphy]

So I heard about this thing at the local college, called a CSA. I'm very unfamiliar but apparently you pay a yearly fee, $400-600 and pick up a weekly harvest of fresh produce?

The Cook Student Organic Farm - LocalHarvest is the one near me, run by the local college (part of Rutgers)

anyone have any experience with this?

CSOF - This Week's Harvest

400$ for a 16 week or 600 for 24....

sold out for 2008.

[jbd]

Yes that is the basic premise. You get fresh garden veggies etc without out the work of gardening yourself. Do a Google search for Booker T Whately. You should find plently of info as he was a strong proponent of such agriculture. Just in case you didn't know, CSA stands for community sustained agriculture.

[Pete]

We didn't do a CSA this year, but we have done them for a number of years. They are great! Wonderful, seasonal produce picked very recently, usually (but not always) from organic farms. With a little research you can't go wrong. Most people freak at the price, usually $350-$600 for a full share (many places also offer half shares for smaller families), but once you start doing the math it works out to be a pretty good deal. I would guess that most CSA's offer approximately 20 deliveries per season. That's $25 a week, at $500 a share. Then you consider that most shares will contain anywhere from 15-20 pounds of produce each week and now you are down to less than $2 a pound for great organic produce. With mine we used to get fresh spinach, baby lettuces, onions, potatoes, heirloom tomatoes, a couple of pints of raspberries and strawberries, 2 pints of maple syrup, zucchini, summer and winter squashes, root vegetables, kale, chard, fennel, fresh herbs and lots of other things. We also had the option to buy egg shares (from an organic egg farmer) and bread shares (from a guy making organic breads). We would buy a half share for me and my wife and oftentimes we couldn't eat all the produce we got each week so we gave some to neighbors. A great place to search for CSAs local to your area is localharvest.org Check them out.

[KYHeirloomer]

CSAs---which stands for Community Supported Agriculture---are a way of spreading both the economic risks and the benefits of local agriculture. One of several alternatives to factory farming.

Although there are several minor variations, they work basically the same. You pay a membership fee early in the year. This can either represent your total payments for the season, or, the more common approach, can be a "dues" situation, and you then pay a small, weekly fee.

On a set schedule, usually weekly, the grower delivers a box of produce to you. Again, minor variations. Delivery can be to your home, or to a central location.

The benefits to this are manifest. The farmer recieves income at a time he most needs it (to pay for seed and other farm needs) but when he otherwise doesn't see it. And the member recieves a weekly delivery of fresh, locally grown, usually organic produce.

Another benefit is the lack of waste, as compared to growing for, say, a farmer's market. When making deliveries the farmer knows that everything on the truck is bespoken. But that's not the case at a farmer's market, and he might come home with half a truckload of produce---which then has to be disposed of.

A side-benefit to the consumer is that the farmer can now afford to experiement with off-beat crops. This is one of the ways, for instance, that Asian veggies have been introduced to the American table.

All in all, CSAs are all benefit and not drawback that anyone has been able to identify. Except for the fact that, by definition, the number of families per CSA is limited by either the size of the farm or the workforce. Every CSA I'm familiar with has a waiting list.

[RPMcMurphy]

I'm going to try to get on the waiting list for next year. This particular CSA is in NJ, and is a farm run by Rutgers students, my soon-to-be inlaws work for rutgers so I may have a waiting list "in"

for it to really benefit me, I'd probably have to get my family, or neighbors in on it as 2 people can only eat so much!

[Pete]

See if they offer half shares.

[KYHeirloomer]

BTW, anyone interested in learning more about Community Supported Agriculture, including location of CSAs, can find most of their questions answered here: Community Supported Agriculture