Month: March 2011

Thanks to Nivia from Our Lady of Sorrows food pantry and Heather from Woodbridge Farm for joining us last night at Abrons Arts Center — and thanks to the many new CSA members who showed up and shared some Woodbridge cheese. And of course thanks to Rose Ortiz from Abrons who has been such a good host to the CSA for two years now and running.

I hope Heather was able to speak to some of the finer details of running a small organic/biodynamic farm, as well as the economic role CSAs play in keeping such farms running.

And Nivia addressed the other end of the CSA, where our food goes when members don’t show up. Her food pantry is a great help to the less fortunate in our neighborhood, and the vegetables we contribute are some of the only fresh foods her pantry has access to.

All of which I hope drives home the point that belonging to the CSA is not the same as buying vegetables at the store or farmers’ market once a week. There is a broader community we are attempting to build with your cooperation.

As of this morning we have closed our 2011 registration, having reached the share limit allotted by Woodbridge. With more people picking up half shares this year, and a few people joining only for the fruit, we have our largest CSA yet, 120 families strong.

Tomorrow night is our Meet the Farmers event — Tuesday, March 29 at 7:00 pm at Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street).

It’s an important evening for new and returning members to find out about life on the farm and ask questions of everyone involved in the CSA (e.g., “What’s this !@#$ cold doing to our crop?”).

We’ve been specially invited to an event uptown this Friday at 6:30, “Is Local Agriculture Good for the Environment: The Hidden Costs of Food in New York City”. (What does specially invited mean? If you tell them that you belong to the Grand Street CSA you’ll get in at the $6 membership price.)

Here’s the blurb:

When it comes to eating sustainably the question of locally sourced agriculture versus importing food is far from settled. Are New Yorkers willing to eat in season only and only what New York has the comparative advantage to produce? New Yorkers penchant for eating out adds for an additional complication. What does that mean for the city’s carbon footprint, given that restaurants are often more wasteful than home kitchens – even those committed to the new ideal of “farm-to-table” production? What are the real environmental costs associated with New York’s food system? Peter Hoffman, chef and owner of Savoy; Gabrielle Langholtz, editor, Edible Manhattan; James E. McWilliams, author of Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly (Little, Brown, 2009); David Owen, author of Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability (Riverhead, 2009); and Jennifer Small, owner and farmer from Flying Pigs Farm evaluate the environmental and social costs and benefits of the city’s food infrastructure.

The Museum of the City of New York is located at 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street.

Please join us on Tuesday, March 29 at 7:00 pm for our very important Meet the Farmers event at Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street).

Heather DeWolf, field manager at Woodbridge Farm, will be on hand to answer all your questions about this year’s vegetables. We’ll also have representatives from Henry Street Settlement, Abrons Arts Center, and Our Lady of Sorrows Food Pantry, to round out our CSA distribution system, as well as Grand Street CSA core members who help keep this whole thing running.

If you’re a new member, this event is an important chance to learn more about what you’ve gotten yourself into. But we hope returning members will join us as well to get to know the people who grow our food. We believe the CSA is not just a buying club, but a partnership between our neighborhood and Woodbridge Farm.

We’ll have genuine Woodbridge cheese to taste, and a few bottles of grape-based beverages to wash it down. We hope to see you there!