By BRUCE ROWLAND
Contributing Writer
April 26, 2009 03:28 am
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An innovative new agricultural program in the North Country is doing everything but causing kids to fight over brussels sprouts.
Best of all, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is providing residents with a reliable bounty of healthy, fresh vegetables at a reasonable cost. But it is also preserving local rural landscapes, allowing young people to profitably get started in the business and is countering the trend of an industry increasingly dominated by agribusiness and larger and larger farms.
"What's so exciting is there are a whole bunch more young farmers in the region," said Laurie Davis, coordinator of Adirondack Harvest with the Essex County Cooperative Extension. "These are small farms, and they're learning to do it together."
At Fledging Crow Vegetables on Robare Road in Keeseville, young farmers Ian Ater, Paige Atkinson and Lucas Christenson have been working in partnership with Manzini Farm to focus on producing nourishing food, rejuvenating soils and pastures, and growing with the spirit of the land. If working hard, problem solving together, making do with what they have and learning on the fly are keys to success, they believe the future for them is bright.
But even if his experience turns out in 10 years to be just an experiment that didn't work, Ater wouldn't consider it a failure.
"I wouldn't take a day of it back," he said, explaining that he helped begin the operation in fall 2007 on 15 acres of leased land, part of a much larger traditional farm. "As most beautiful things are, it's pretty simple. It's like living a dream."
CSA, a model that is believed to have originated in Japan and was transplanted into the New Hampshire/Massachusetts region in the 1980s, is a relationship of mutual support and commitment between local farmers and community members, who pay the farmer an annual membership fee to cover the production costs of the farm. In return, members receive a weekly share of the harvest during the growing season.
"Over here, it's pretty new," Davis said, explaining that it's been popular in Vermont for much longer. "Now it's really catching on."
People like to know they have a weekly supply of vegetables harvested at their peak freshness, ripeness, flavor and vitamin and mineral content. They enjoy learning to "eat seasonably" as things ripen, and it also guarantees the farmer financial support and enables many small-to-moderate scale organic and bio-intensive family farms to remain viable.
"In its most basic form, it's the type of operation in which the customer pays earlier in the season," Ater said, adding that's when a farmer is most in need of cash to do spring planting. "Without our members, there's no way we'd be farming this year."
Fledging Crow Vegetables also offers other products like pork and turkey that they sell at the end of the season. Pretty much any farm product can be sold on a CSA model including flowers, eggs, meats, baked goods and there is even a pizza CSA in Oregon, Atkinson said. "For 52 weeks a year, they get a pizza every Thursday."
There is some flexibility in the system in case of a natural disaster affecting a certain crop. In that case, payment would have to be made in other ways. But "that's the worst-case scenario," Ater said.
CSA keeps money in the community as it supports local farmers and keeps land in agriculture. "A lot of the farmers buy locally and it just keeps going around," Davis said.
Before branching out on his own, Ater worked for an organic cheese farm, Clover Mead, in the Town of Chesterfield, and at Essex Farm near Essex, a year-round, full-diet CSA featuring pork, chicken, beef, vegetables, hand-milked cows, butter and cheese. Horses there are used for cultivation.
Atkinson began teaching at North Country School near Lake Placid when she got out of college and found her favorite part of the job was helping cultivate the gardens. "I really like kids, but ..." she said.
The "but" part led her to Essex Farm where she became acquainted with the small farming circle that included her soon-to-be partners. They were impressed with each other's work ethic, intensity and love of farming. "It just worked out," Ater said. "We started with an empty field here."
Word about their new farm was spread by word of mouth, brochures and e-mail, and people signed up. "I was excited with our first pickup because I got to meet all our mystery people," Atkinson said.
They now have 27 to 30 customers. "We probably have another 10 who are going to work or trade for their share," Ater said.
Among other things, they offer green onions, red and white onions, cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, kale, chard, parsley and hard-to-find items such as celeriac. "It's one of the scariest vegetables you'll ever want to see," Atkinson said. "It looks like a dinosaur or something."
Despite the hard work such as picking the rocks that miraculously spring to the surface of their field every spring, they all enjoy the camaraderie, variety and problem solving the job entails every day, despite the fact things rarely go according to plan. Being at the mercy of Mother Nature and the market means frequently changing directions. If it's raining, they learned, you can't do everything on your list.
But it also has other rewards. "I like the dress code," Atkinson said. "It's always casual Friday here."
At Rehoboth Homestead on Jabez Allen Road in Peru, Beth Spaugh has also joined the local CSA movement. "I just can't imagine going back to an office job," Spaugh said.
She said a CSA works much better for her than taking her produce to a farmers market and stores. All the packaging, traveling and marketing wasn't all that enjoyable and took valuable time away from the growing, which she enjoys the most. "It was stressful," she said.
With the CSA, she can lay her produce out at her farm like a buffet. It gives people more choices, and it eliminates the time it took to box and transport. "People loved it, and I loved it," she said, adding that her farm can support 100 CSA shares, and she can still take leftovers to the farmers market.
"It frees up time to do a really good job with the CSA," she said, explaining she loves growing things like heirloom tomatoes.
She agreed that CSA has allowed a variety of new people to get into farming. At a conference in Saratoga recently, she said, "it's a wide mix of age groups, and half of them are women."
With good business management, growers can make a good living. There have been cases of owners grossing $75,000 on one acre, she said. It all depends on offering an attractive product. "In CSAs, your product is a package, some staples but enough variation to make it interesting."
Spaugh offers a wide variety of vegetables including broccoli, cabbages, all kinds of tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, early and late lettuce and chemical-free potatoes.
She said she hopes to get most of her members by May 1, and will have to raise prices slightly after that because it will be late for planning.
"I have to do something to get people to commit early," she said.
She enjoys making up samples of food and providing recipes. Her clientele includes people of all ages. "We have quite a few vegetarians," she said, adding that many people love fresh vegetables but don't want to garden or have only a small plot. "Mostly, it's people who are recognizing if they start from really good ingredients, it's easy to make good food."
She said commercial agriculture breeds for shipping, mechanical harvest and shelf life.
"Usually, when you breed for that they lose flavor," she said. "So we're able to select for flavor because they (customers) get it so fresh it's going to have a good shelf life."
She said people don't realize how different fresh produce can be. "You can save a lot of money on salad dressing used to cover a lack of flavor," she said. "A little vinaigrette is all you need."
Spaugh said what she likes best about CSA is not having to deal with three full-time jobs, growing and harvesting, packaging and marketing. "What I like about the CSA better than the farmers market is I can plan for it better. I can map out a goal every week, and it's sold."
You can get a better price at a farmers market, but on a rainy Sunday you can't always sell everything.
She said there's also a responsibility that comes with the job. With a farmers market, if she makes a mistake and doesn't get a crop, it's just her loss. The customer can find it somewhere else.
"But with CSA, people have paid me ahead, and I take that responsibility seriously," she said.
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Photos
Beth Spaugh of Rehoboth Homestead in Peru looks over some of her young plants as she looks forward to the harvest season. P-R Photo
Laurie Davis, Ian Ater and Paige Atkinson (left to right) play with piglets at Fledging Crow Vegetables. P-R Photo
P-R Photo