I made this butternut squash lasagna with CSA squash last year.
Generally speaking, when one is searching for some sort of sustainability-related activity or service in the Bay Area, the problem is never finding said activity or service, but choosing which of fifty, say, purveyors of hand-raised organic cricket-fed cruelty-free cockscombs is the one for you.
So it is with choosing a Bay Area CSA, that being Community Supported Agriculture, that meaning a variety of things depending on who is talking. Generally speaking, CSAs are an opportunity for non-farmers — ie almost everyone — to subsidize local farmers and their products, by buying a “share” in their enterprises. This usually amounts to agreeing to pay in a set amount per week or year in exchange for produce or meat or whatever the CSA is producing.
A lot of CSAs offer a box of produce every week or every other week. That’s the kind I was looking for; you get a box of extraordinarily fresh, completely seasonal, downright sexy fruits and vegetables and it’s up to you to cook it all by the end of the week. Depending on how busy you are and how random the ingredients are on a particular week, the night before the new box comes, when you are intent on using up the dregs of last week’s produce, may resemble a laid-back episode of Top Chef, only you are forced to actually taste the red kale and charentais melon coulis instead of gleefully watching Tom Colicchio glower at it onscreen.
(You still don’t get to taste Hubert Keller. CSAs can’t do everything. Sad face.)
In my quest to develop my own eco-kashrut philosophy, I’d like to start supporting local farmers who try to leave the earth a little healthier than they found it. So I spent the last week or so winnowing the massive list of Bay Area CSAs, based on the following criteria:
1) Conveniently located drop location.
Many CSAs offer your box at a local customer’s house, hopefully in your neighborhood. I have belonged to several CSAs in the past, and having to drive across the world to pick up the raw ingredients for dinner is both lame and probably-not-very-eco-kosher. The same goes, imho, for having the food driven in a delivery van across the world to my house.
2) A reasonable variety of food in the box.
I loved my last CSA, until we hit winter and it was bok choy every. single. week. I know it was in season. I was trying, gamely, to roll with the seasonal punches. But, honestly, I could not think of anything to do with bok choy. I don’t like cooking it. It’s full of water and gets limp easily and ugh you see my point.
3) Affordable.
I don’t want to pony up 6 months’ worth of dues upfront. And I don’t want to borrow against my firstborn child to pay for mesclun.
4) Offers something besides vegetables.
Some CSAs offer flowers, farm-fresh eggs, or even meat.
With these criteria in mind, I finally settled on Two Small Farms CSA. The drop location is a block from my house, they offer the famous Mariquita strawberries, and they don’t operate during the winter, which keeps me from being smothered in bok choy and winter greens. They offer a nine-week payment schedule, and the box itself comes out to about $22/week for organic produce. They also offer fresh organic flowers for another $8/week, about what I’m already paying at Trader Joe’s for not-organic flowers. And did I mention I can pick up the box a block from my house?
So I have a CSA! At least I will, when it starts up next week. Now, onto my next task: lining up reliable sources for humanely raised meat.
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