Community Supported Agriculture
We’ve just about completed our first two rounds of registration for past members and people on the wait list — and there are still about ten shares available for the 2010 season.
We’ll open up general registration tomorrow, Saturday morning, right here on this site. If you know anyone who wants a chance to get organic produce from a local farm this summer, tell them to check back here this weekend.
Paula Crossfield of Civil Eats picks up on this inspiring and entertaining TED Talk by Jamie Oliver this week accepting his $100,000 TED Prize.
“I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.”
All of which dovetails nicely with all the good things the Michelle Obama has been saying this week.
Everyone on our 2010 wait list has just received an email with instructions for registering for the season. Shares will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, and when we have reached our quota for the season we will close the form to any new members.
If by any chance there are still shares available in two weeks, on Feb. 25, we will open up registration to the public. Please check back here for information.
I went to a great workshop at Just Food the other night, and was reminded that they’re connected to a bunch of things that might be of interest to our members. (Just Food is the organization that helps connect communities in NYC with local farms — they got us started back in 2008.)
First of all, there’s the CSA in NYC Conference coming up on Feb. 28. Several of our core members are going to be attending, but the conference is open to anyone at all who’s interested in the current state of CSAs in the city.
On the way out of their office, I picked up some flyers that looked interesting:
For those of you hooked in to such things, Just Food has a useful Twitter feed and a lively Facebook page.
Several of you have asked, so we thought we’d post an answer: we do plan on having a fruit share available again for 2010, though we haven’t yet worked out the details.
There were some concerns from members about our partner last year, Breezy Hill Orchard, mostly stemming from miscommunication early in the season. We’ve been in touch with them about those issues, and recently received this note from Breezy Hill’s Elizabeth Ryan:
Hi, I am writing to touching base about our CSA program this year. As you know, last year was our first ever experience with CSAs, and it was a quite rocky. It took us a while to get a grip on the whole thing, and as it turned out, it was also a pretty challenging year in terms of the weather, The rain was unprecedented, there were actually only 4 days in June that did not rain., and that was only the beginning of some pretty challenging weather. We wanted to reach out to you to get an understanding of whether you want to work together this year.
We learned a lot last year. We will be making some very substantial changes in our CSA’s this year. There will be significantly more summer fruit, more diversity, better communication and hopefully it will be a successful year. We have spent the last several months working through the successes and challenges of last year, and have had some very helpful conversations and feedback from CSA members and lots of great advice from other CSA farmers. We also have taken on another wonderful farm with lots of cherries,peaches, plums, and apricots,
We have a full time CSA coordinator this year, Anne Matos Diaz. We will be expanding the variety of the weekly shares, we heard a lot that the early season quantities were too small, and the members wanted more diversity of fruit on a weekly basis. We think we can do that. We will also be hosting a CSA blog so that member can have a better idea of what’s ripe and ready each week.
Probably our most important innovation will be a discount program so that our CSA members can get an ongoing discount in the farmers markets. I am hoping to meet personally if possible at the beginning of the season with each CSA to be sure that we are all on the same page, and to answer questions in person. We have drafted a brochure that we will be handing out at the Just Food meetings, We want to be sure that the expectations on the part of the members are line with what is realistic from a production point of view. We also hope that CSA members will take advantage of the opportunity to visit our beautiful orchards more this year.
We will also be offering the egg and pasta shares again, that was pretty straight forward.
Please let me know, of course feel free to forward this to anyone who you think should get it,
with best regards,
Elizabeth Ryan
The New York City Community Gardens Coalition (NYCCGC) holds an important forum on the future of New York’s community gardens on Feb. 6 at the New School. From their flier:
In 2002, most community gardens were “saved” by a legal agreement. That agreement expires in September, 2010. After that, no city garden is “safe.” United we will demand to know from our state and city representatives what is being done to make our community gardens permanent! All community gardeners and supporters need to be at this Forum!
If you’re interested, you can get more info at their website, and register for free here.
Community gardens are a bigger part of life above Houston St. than in our corner of the lower east side, but the principles NYCCGC fights for could affect the future of empty lots all around us.
Last year’s members have just received an email with instructions for re-registering for the 2010 season. The deadline for re-registration is February 9, after which we will notify our wait list if there are shares still available for this year.
Education Alliance is gearing up to do several joint events with Just Food, the great organization that brings CSA to NYC (and helped get us started up two years ago). The first one will be a raw cooking demonstration and tasting on February 9 with Stephanie Tourles, author of Raw Energy. See here for details.
2009 CSA members will be receiving instructions for re-registration via email within the next week, and will have until Feb. 9 to commit to the new season.
After that, everyone on our wait list will be notified via email about how to register for 2010.
Farmers Dave and Julia have already let us know that we’ll have 10 more shares available for the new season, which means that we’ll have room for up to 20 new members.
We’ll keep this site updated with registration information over the next couple months while we fill up our roster.
Brian Crowley from Hillman and Danny Rosenthal from Education Alliance are convening a second general meeting of community members interested in starting a food co-op in our neighborhood. This initiative is still in its earliest stages. Anyone at all interested is welcome to attend, get some more information, and figure out how to be involved.