Tastes Like Food

This past summer growing season, my household and some of my friends joined a CSA. CSA, community-supported agriculture, is a model where local families and individuals buy a “share” from a farm before the growing season starts, and then get regular disbursements of fresh food throughout the season. I like the idea of supporting local farms and getting ultra-fresh organic food.

At the beginning of the spring, I did a little research into selecting a CSA with a friend who split the share with me. We started our research from Mixed Greens’ CSA list. (Mixed Greens lives in Boulder and has been getting a food share from a nearby farm Pachamama Farm, for a couple of years. It sounds like Pachamama has a superb set up.)

Our list of criteria:

• organic
• large enough share to feed 5 people
• Denver pick-up
• have a web site and/or be responsive via email (this was our main method of finding a farm)

Bonus criteria:

• fruit share available
• nice
• organized

We emailed about 6 or so different farms. Only two replied. One of the two that replied was Delaney Farm in the Denver area, Aurora to be specific. They mailed me a two page info sheet about the farm, the costs, our responsibilities, how it worked and the veggies folks could expect to receive in a typical year. (That was pretty much what sold me.) So we signed up for the full share designed to feed 4-5 people with fresh veggies every week, as well as a fruit share which would come every other week from a farm on the Colorado western slope.

Delaney Farm in early spring:

A sampling of early season vegetables we received:

• mixed baby lettuces
• garlic scapes
• spicy asian greens
• rainbow chard
• radishes

Mid-season vegetables:

• summer squash (zucchini, yellow squash, patty pans)
• tomatoes (all kinds: roma, red and yellow grape, a variety of heirloom)
• cucumbers (including lemon cucumbers which I am in love with!)
• potatoes
• onions
• carrots
• garlic
• spinach
• snap peas
• multi-colored string beans
• green bell peppers
• spicy peppers

Late season vegetables:

• all kinds of fall squashes (acorn, sunburst, pie pumpkins, spaghetti…)
• more potatoes
• more tomatoes

Successes:

• Receiving fresh local organic food is so cool. Seeing where the food was grown (so close to home!) was neat. I felt good about supporting a local farm.
• The fruit share was super! We received a case of fresh fruit every other week. A late freeze made the cherry harvest much smaller, so we didn’t receive any cherries. We were loaded up with incredible peaches, a variety apples and pears. The fruit share cases came with notes from the orchard — which I really appreciated learning about.
• We showed up and the food was ready. We didn’t have to pick it. We did select our individual veggies from the various bins.
• The farm was overall fairly organized and was very friendly. Always nice! This gets big plusses in my book.

Challenges:

• Driving across town during rush hour is rough. We were responsible to pick up the fresh food every week in Aurora between 4:30 and 6:30. Coming from Denver that was a hard task with rush hour. It also seemed counterproductive to drive an hour each week to pick up a bag of fresh food.
• Bad weather happens. The possibility of bad weather always exists. And the possibility became a reality. A large spring hail storm damaged the crops.
• Coordinating a group is hard. As there was more than one family splitting this share, we (my friends and I) had to coordinate who would pick up our share and also retrieve the food from the person who picked it up. This turned out to be way more difficult than expected.
• The farm seemed inexperienced. I was disappointed with a few things about the vegetables. All the summer squashes (zucchinis, yellow squash, patty pans) were gigantic and not very tasty in such a monster size.

I think it was an invaluable experience despite the challenges. The Delaney Farm CSA share seems an ideal set up for someone near the farm in Aurora.

I plan to buy into a CSA again next season. However, I won’t be joining the Delaney Farm because of the drive. And I will get a half share for my partner and me, instead of splitting a full share with others so we don’t have to coordinate with our busy friends. I would like to find a Colorado farm that has a delivery point near our home (which I seem to recall from my research last year there were a few).

If you’re not ready to join a CSA, I highly encourage you to visit a nearby farmer’s market regularly. You’ll have access to most (or more!) of the same tasty vegetables from Colorado farms and you’ll get to hand-select your favorites. You’ll be getting the freshest local food available and you’ll be supporting Colorado’s farm community.