CSA: A source for locally-grown food

- Andrea Hermanson

I first started to investigate Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in my search to source more locally produced foods last summer. My goal was to buy directly from farmers as much as possible. Outside of farmers markets, CSA is one of the only other avenues I found to accomplish this objective (which led me to think about how I go about acquiring to gardening skills...). CSA in the Seattle area has many formations as I came to observe with the overarching concept of directly supporting the farmer. CSA programs engage individuals directly into the risks and rewards of farming. Members are essentially up-front investors who receive proportionate shares of the harvest. For some CSAs, there is a labor requirement (i.e. 10 hours of farm work per month). There are also subscription CSAs popping up, which some might argue are antithetical to the spirit of the CSA. Members can start and stop any time and pay along the way (i.e. weekly). Both structures, however, support local, small-scale farming operations which typically use chemical-free methods. The King County's Puget Sound Fresh directory has thirteen CSA programs listed in King County alone.

My household signed up with Full Circle Farm, a subscription CSA program, and has reaped the delectable benefits. While the fall months have proven to be particularly challenging in using up all the produce with a hectic schedule, the experience is thoroughly satisfying. The produce is delicious and gorgeous (you will not find any torpedo carrots or waxed apples), and you can go visit the place that provided your daily nourishment. Here are a few photos from my visit to Full Circle last summer as a volunteer with Cascade Harvest Coalition. It was gratifying to break a sweat working on farm projects with others and to get dirty moving food to table.

Working within the confines of the capitalist agricultural system, CSA is an innovative effort to re-localize food production, connect alienated eaters with the land, revalue farms and farm workers, and create a more humane and sustainable food system—connections that have been lost in the rapid and violent transformation to industrial agriculture in the United States.

Marra Farm--South Park, Seattle

One of the last remaining original agricultural land in Seattle, this farm was worked on by the Marra family for almost 70 years until 1970 when it was sold to King Country. Restoration began in 1997 because of the efforts of a few community members and later received help from various government and non-profit organizations. Members of the Marra Farm Coalition include Lettuce Link, Seattle Youth Garden Works (SYGW), Mien Community Garden, and South Park Neighborhood Association.

Marra Farm serves the community in many more ways than supplying organic produce. It has become a community-wide project which creates unity and pride for the people involved. The farmers grow food for their own families, but also donate produce to local residents including senior citizens and elementary school students and their families. This is a vital contribution to this city; more than 13% of South Park households live below the poverty line. In addition, food is also sold our own farmer's market in the U-District. http://www.solid-ground.org/Programs/Nutrition/Marra/Pages/default.aspx

Lee Harper, manager for coalition member Lettuce Link, explains "We've got teens, community gardeners, immigrants and kids, but we're all Marra Farm. We're all helping to create a stronger community. This mission is evolving bigger than any one organization." This farm gives families the ability to teach their children where their food comes from and how to include them in the process. Each and every person is an important part of the growth of the farm and the community. "Volunteers harvest the vegetables every Friday and deliver them to the food bank, which serves about 140 families every Saturday morning." More important than simply growing organic produce, this farm is able to sustain its volunteers as well as members of the community who are in need of food. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/226993_marra03.html?searchpagefrom=2&searchdiff=3

If you'd like to see its effects for yourself, watch this video on youtube--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMQFhgcq45g&eurl=http://www.solid-ground.org/Programs/Nutrition/Marra/Pages/default.aspx

-Nicole Boland

Farmer's Markets

In Washington state we have an organization called the Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance (NFMA.) This is a community-based organization developed in order to supply the city with produce based on the growing popularity and public support of the neighborhood Farmers Markets in Seattle. The NFMA hopes to support Washington’s small farms and farming families. Farmer's markets enable farms and their farming families to have direct sale to the population. NFMA hopes to educate people on where their food is from and what they are eating.

The NFMA is a non-profit corporation. There is a board of directors, where there are elven people, 4 of which are farmers who sell their produce at the markets. The other members are also highly involved with the program.

In Washington state there are seven local markets "producer-only" markets. This means that there are no crafts, flea markets or wholesalers. The farm produce includes fresh, seasonal vegetables and fruits, herbs, nuts, dairy products eggs, honey, poultry, mushrooms, fish, meat, pickled vegetables, ciders, pasta, bread and other baked goods. Everything must be grown and produced in Washington.

They even give you suggestion on what to eat locally each month.

December:

apples, pears, plums, lettuces, greens, fresh herbs, Brussels Sprouts, Jerusalem artichokes, beets, broccoli, Romanesco Broccoli, beans (dried: Cannolini, Black Turtle, Peas), Carrots, Garlic: Elephant and Spanish Roja, shallots, scallion, Turnips, Rutabagas, Parsnips, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Fava Beans, Winter Squash, Pumpkin Squash, potatoes, Chantrelles.

To find a farmer's market near you go to http://dnr.metrokc.gov/wlr/farms/farmers_markets.htm
--Nina Miller

The Local Food of Dai, the Southwestern Minority of China

Although I'm not a member of the minority Dai, their tradtions and foods are what I really interested in. So let me introduce some of them.

Dai is a Chinese minority that is mostly located in the southwestern province Yunnan in China, where it is covered by vast rainforest. The Dai's villages are always surrounded by patches of bamboos. So the bamboos are only used as the construction materials but also ideal tools for cooking and a main source of food.

Dai people cook their everyday meal with bamboos. Most frequently, they cut a part of bamboo for about 40cm in length and 3cm thickness in the sides as the container, and pour some polished glutinous rice in it with water and some spices. Then they use some big leaves such as the banana's leave to stuff the container tightly and then put it on the fire until there is a small of bamboo. The Dai will cut it half to half or peel the bamboo's bark just like peeling banana and eat the rice inside. The bamboo rice tastes very nice with the fresh and delicate fragrance from bamboo. And the farmers would like to bring some when they are out for cropping for they are quite convenient to carry. Furthermore, the Dai also cook the soup, fish , chicken and pork with the bamboo container.

What the Dai eat about bamboo is the bamboo shoot, which emerges out after raining just aside the old bamboo. For the sake that in the area of Dai it is raining for half a year every year, the bamboo shoots are main source of food for the Dai. Cooking with vegetables, chickens, mushrooms, and even insects, the bamboo shoots, which are more than 100 varities, are delicious and nutritious, and especially good for resisting the humidity in the rainforest for the Dai people. And they also have incredible value as tradtional medicine.

The bamboo foods are no more special to the Dai than to the other parts of the world dependng on its special geographic characteristics. The Dai are living with bamboo.

-By Yuting Ma

Pike Place Market

Growing up in Seattle, I often visited the Pike Place Market but never really thought of where the produce and food comes from, or about the people who sell it.  Pike Place Market is a perfect example of eating local in Seattle.  Along with local food and produce there are vendors selling arts, crafts, and clothing.  One of the main attractions are the multiple fish markets selling local fresh seafood.  Here is a short video showing what part of the market looks like, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVyjjWlqPqY.  It shows the wide variety of flowers and produces available.  

The market offers a chance for producers to directly sell their produce to the public without selling it to a corporation or middle man before it reaches a grocery store.  In today's growing world it gets harder to buy local food from markets simply because farms are being pushed farther and farther away from the cities as population booms.  Another benefit of buying from local producers is that you can better avoid genetically modified crops and actually know where your foods are coming form instead of guessing how food gets from the ground to your plate.

Pike Place Market is as much a tourist attraction as it a place for Seattle residents to find locally grown produce.  For those of us who wish to skip the tourism and just find locally grown food there are several other options.  There are farmers markets located in Broadway, Columbia City, Lake City, Magnolia, Phinney, the University District, and West Seattle.  Hours and locations can be found: http://www.seattlefarmersmarkets.org/markets.  These markets are based on local, "producer-only" markets.  There are no arts or crafts available, only Washington State farm produce and processed goods.  A few days ago I went to the University District market on 50th and the Ave and found this experience to be much more local than Pike Place Market.  It is always fun to visit Pike Place Market but often it is a hassle because of so many people and tourists so if you strictly want some locally grown produce I suggest head to one of the seven farmers markets located in the Seattle area.

- Alec Haberman

"Eat local" consumerism

- Andrea Hermanson

Our focus this quarter on indigenous lococentric worldviews has challenged me to look at the current consumer trend to “eat local” in a new light—and has reminded me of its more humble origins. When I talk to my parents, who are farmers, about CSA programs, farmers markets, or organic gardening, they chuckle and wistfully reference the “olden days.” While mainly a pastime now, my mom still cans and freezes produce from her garden every summer, and she forever produced in me the longing for the real, juicy, mouth-watering tomato. In the "olden days," however, it was less out of principle than out of habit and economic necessity. When industrial agriculture came to town with cheap, sliced bread and ready-to-drink milk, my parents were happy to make the transition from early morning bread making and cow milking to store-bought products. Knowing what we know today about the food system, I’m not sure they would have been so quick to jump on the bandwagon.


I like to imagine that today’s consumer movement to eat local is moving towards a more placed-based epistemology concerning food as it positions place and the reciprocal relationship of people to the land as central to healthy, resilient communities—and condemns industrial agriculture’s effects on our bodies and minds. However, an epistemological shift requires more radical steps than going to the farmers market and deciding to sign up on eatlocalchallenge.com. There is clearly a profound spiritual connection to place for truly lococentric cultures that produces more sustainable, humane ways of living through not only food-buying habits, but through social, political, and cultural systems of belief and practice. This multi-layered and scared link was embodied in Delbert Miller visit and presence in class and Bruce Miller in the film “Teachings of the Tree People.” While I think it is clear that the consumer movement is not exactly spiritual, it is one step in the right direction in my view. Here are two interesting websites that represent this movement (…and highlight a strange competitiveness, as though the only way you can change a practice is through aggressive, sweeping action):

http://www.eatlocalchallenge.com/

http://100milediet.org/