March 27, 2009

Greasy Rider

The greenest place to get produce is your back yard. Growing an organic garden will save you money, put fresh food on your table, and dramatically reduce your carbon footprint, because there's no need for packaging or shipping.

The second-greenest option is to get involved with a local organic farm. Community supported agriculture, or CSA, is a growing movement in the US. Before we moved to North Carolina recently, we belonged to a CSA in Burlington, Vermont called the organic Intervale Community Farm. Each spring Dr. Wife MD and I, along with about 500 other families, would pay a fee for a share of the farm's harvest. Then, during the summer, we would come one day a week to fetch our allotted portion of produce. Some of it would be picked for us, and some—like cherry tomatoes, string beans, sugar snap peas, and strawberries—we would have to walk into the fields and pick ourselves. The drawback is that you don't have much say over what you get each week—like sometimes we'd have kale coming out our ears. And of course, the bounty is dependent on the local weather, so in a drought year, you won't be taking home as much produce.

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At our CSA, we could also buy meats, cheeses, apples, and breads from other local organic producers. Pick-up day seemed less like a chore than a community gathering. (I've never seen so many Birkenstock-wearers gather in one place at one time, even in Vermont. If you didn't have a Dennis Kucinich bumper sticker on your car, you were considered a conservative, or—worse—apathetic.) It was a great way for us to connect with our friends, and a highlight of the week for our kids. In turn, we were supporting the local economy, and dramatically reducing our carbon footprint. To find a CSA near you, go to the web site localharvest.org.

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