It's been ten months now since YearlyKos '07 inspired me to find and join a local CSA. I'm fortunate that living in Southern California allows me to receive fresh produce year-round, but at this time of year most every CSA in the northern hemisphere is in full swing.

The experience has changed the way I eat. I no longer keep meat in the house and usually pass it up when dining out. There is no taste that compares to that of a fresh berry just plucked from the vine that morning, or of fresh-picked salad greens with mustard-herb dressing. With the spotlight on crude oil, both for its soaring price and its CO2 by-products, I feel good that I’m doing a little something to reduce its use. My produce travels under 80 miles from farm to my fork, rather than the 200 miles from the Central Valley or the 1500 mile average our other food travels to reach us. When produce is recalled, I don't worry because I know where mine comes from and how it was grown. Eating lower on the food chain allows the vegetables to be used for my direct benefit, rather than serve as feed for animal meat, saving both farm land and the animals. And because the produce is organic, it hasn’t seen any oil-based fertilizers.

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.

It's a day late for Earth Day, but this will be short and sweet. CSA's reduce the distance that your food is transported, support family farms, and allow you to get organic or minimally treated produce at a reasonable price. CSA's also have the advantage of providing nutritional alternatives to low income communities and individuals where fresh vegetables are hard to find or afford.

The film "King Corn" will be aired on PBS this week. I'm looking forward to it. I love corn. I just don't like what we do with corn. In honor of "King Corn" I came up with some reasons to just say NO to corn.

What do the cost of food,  the food riots, overweight Americans, drug resistant disease and possibly the die off of bees all have in common?

Disclaimer: This is a biased post. I am pro small family farms and I am pro honey bees.  I belong to a CSA. I am a lifetime honey eater. I go through a large jar of the stuff every month. I am firmly opposed to High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Update: Here is a link to a more thorough diary on corn written earlier this week by CSI Bentonville: http://www.dailykos.com/...

Throughout our extended weekend and stay with a gracious Obama volunteer in Pittsburgh, I must admit I wondered if someone had matched us, a white, Mennonite-by-choice, vegan couple with a 70 year-young, black, Reconciliation-by-choice, health-conscious grandmother.  We had so much in common, but our differences made for deep and purposeful conversations.  It was as if we had filled out a matchmaker form in great detail and were placed intentionally with Dolly.

Yes, I've been away for a while. And I'll be away again. My life is quite crazy with my trying to launch a technology business while still keeping the company that owns my mortgage company afloat.

But I recently received the seasonal invitation to buy a harvest share from my CSA and there were a number of surprises therein that brings me to write another of these little diaries. Details on the flip.

Eight weeks ago, inspired by the "Forging Links to An Alternative Food Chain" panel at YearlyKos, I subscribed to a local CSA and wrote about that experience. Several folks have wondered how that experience has gone so I thought it was time for an update.

I'll start by saying that the Japanese word for Community Supported Agriculture, teikei hits the nail squarely on the head when it translates as "food with the farmer's face on it". Of all the characteristics of a CSA subscription, this one has had the most impact on me. I know who grows my food, and where it comes from. Ironically, I haven't yet met my farmer, but I feel like I've known her for years through our correspondence, and through the very real connection of food baskets each week. This personal connection took on a new significance this past week when I learned that her farm was right in the path of the Rice fires in Northern San Diego County.

True confessions:  until moments ago, I was planning to further the theme of bawdy VMD titles by calling this one "Taking a Leek in the Suburbs."  (And maybe I've just furthered the theme anyway!)

But, it just didn't sound right at 7 a.m.,  so, I opted for something more direct, which is fine, too, because there is something really positive happening in the local food scene in Boulder, CO:

You've heard of Community Supported Agriculture ... well, recently I met a grower who's taken it a step further.

Local production, sometimes meaning the next yard over Knowing the farmer, who is a neighbor you see and greet from the sidewalk A variety of fresh vegetables each week of the growing season, and you get to see them growing every day Opportunities to volunteer on a farm by walking a few steps out the door with your cup of morning coffee in hand

Make the leap for more photos and details!

It seems only fitting that a panel at YearlyKos regarding food and agriculture would be responsible for sowing seeds of change in my daily life.

I've already written about how helpful I found the Forging Links to An Alternative Food Chain panel. I'm now in the middle of reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, and What To Eat is waiting in the wings. Both of these books do a great service in raising awareness of where our food comes from. Tom Philpott's portion of the panel was a fitting complement to these books, in that he explained how factory farming is dismantling our agricultural infrastructure, poisoning our environment and leading to an increased dependence on an unsustainable model.

Last year I joined a CSA for the first time. This year, I visited my CSA during their open house and got to talk at length with the proprietors. As is usual, reality was not at all like my preconceptions.

I found their story interesting. And I'll share some of it with you below the fold...

I've seen a bunch of press recently (at least the kind of press I read) about how monoculture is bad ecologically because it makes pest control harder (i.e. if a thing that eats wheat finds your 100s-of-acres-big wheat field it will go to town and breed like mad), reduces habitat for wildlife (critters thrive with biodiversity, especially the big critters), depletes soil and therefore requires increased fertilization (different crops need different nutrients and some kinds of crops actually put nutrients back - i.e. nitrogen fixers), and increases shipping distances (yes, let's grow all the rice in California and then ship it all to China!).

And all of those are good points and I agree with them. But there's one thing I keep distinctly NOT seeing and it surprizes me that it hasn't been brought up. And that's the issue of labor. Monoculture is also bad for farmworkers. There were two distinct things I recall hearing in the past several months that finally made this click in my head.

Today's mail contained a welcome and pleasant surprise. A small inkjet printed brochure, list, and subscription slip. It invited me to look into joining the local CSA.

No, the CSA is not the Confederate States of America. Well, it was, but today those initials stand for Community Supported Agriculture and it is yet another small thing you can do to move your life closer to sustainability without having to give up your nice lifestyle.

Massachusetts!

I am very pleased to hear that we are number one in direct sales from farmers to consumers.  The source is here:

Boutique farming
Mass. food growers find a profitable niche
By Sam Allis, Globe Columnist

....James Perry, the great curmudgeon of a political reporter for The Wall Street Journal, listened to the exchange, then turned to no one in particular and asked, "Has anyone ever met a happy farmer?"

There are some in Massachusetts because, it turns out, it is the top state in the country for cash retail sales direct from farm to consumer. Who knew? The average take per farm is $24,876....

emphasis mine, local pride and all...

We have lost several freedoms we can credit to the Republican Congress since 1994.  First, they made sure Gay Marriage would be Federally prohibited.  The attacks on Habeas soon followed after 9/11 - and succeeded.  Thanks to Shurb & Co. we cannot trust that our domestic or international communications are not being monitored.  Now, even land travel to Canada or Mexico will be restricted to those with the means to obtain a passport by this time next year.  All of these encroachments into our personal lives need to be beaten back, for sure. Yet, one freedom that we have not had in some time seems to have been swept under the rug, once again.  

In 2005, Rep. Frank introduced H.R. 2087, which would have effectively removed Marijuana as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, allowing the several states to address Cannabis (including hemp) on their own.  I believe it is time that this bill was reintroduced for consideration by a more friendly Congress.

So we just joined our local CSA.  What's a CSA, you ask?  It stands for Community Supported Agriculture and here's how the folks at Local Harvest define it:

Many farms offer produce subscriptions, where buyers receive a weekly or monthly basket of produce, flowers, fruits, eggs, milk, coffee, or any sort of different farm products.

A CSA, (for Community Supported Agriculture) is a way for the food buying public to create a relationship with a farm and to receive a weekly basket of produce. By making a financial commitment to a farm, people become "members" (or "shareholders," or "subscribers") of the CSA.

You can find more on what a CSA is and how they work here.

We were out of the country for most of the season, but we got a pro-rated share that extends from now until October.

When did our country's food supply spin out of control, as it has? When did it all go to hell?

I don't want to suggest that everything is worse than it was back in the "good old days." I can't even pretend that I was around in the "good old days." I grew up in the 1980's.

I would bet we have more variety now. More ethnic foods, more exotic fruits and vegetables, that sort of thing. I doubt many Americans ate sushi 100 years ago.

But, on the whole, when did we become, essentially, factory products. That's what I feel like. Our food is made as cheaply as possible, as quickly as possible, with as little human involvement as possible from the earth to the table. It positively makes me feel like I am living in Brave New World.

It isn't easy being green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things

As much as I admire and respect Mr. The Frog, he's wrong about that. It is easy being green. And I can prove it.

Many of these topics have been diaried before, so I don't lay any claim to great originality here, but there are so very many things you can do to save the world (or at least lay waste to a little less of it). I've taken many of these steps. I'll be taking more as time and money permits. The important thing to remember is that you don't have to huddle cold by the light of a single white LED to improve your working relationship with planet earth. Details follow.

Happy holidays to all my friends, foes, and indifferent acquaintances out there.  I hope most of you have had a little extra time in the past week to relax, spend time with your families, and take a break from the daily round of relentless work, overscheduled busyness, and unremitting outrage.  If you have not, please accept my condolences-- it's hard for me to slow down, too, for reasons both of practicality and of personality.

Nevertheless, it's that time of the year when we traditionally take a little time for navel-gazing, taking stock of what worked for us in the past year and what we'd like to change.  Boy, there are a lot of things I'd like to change, in both my inner and outer worlds.  But let me offer you ten that are food-related, with the caveat that all New Year's resolutions are idealizations.  They're what we would like to be, at our best.

In 2006, I resolve to: