South Central Farmers

Color me ignorant. I had heard of the South Central Farm.  I didn’t realize that the South Central Farmers’ Cooperative CSA had emerged from its ashes, based out of Bakersfield, CA.  I just signed up for our first weekly box.

The South Central Farm story is about a brouhaha between a community garden and a developer.  Protests were had, celebrities spoke out, and the developer won.  The gardens were razed in 2006.  I confess, I was so busy with planning my wedding in ’06 that I didn’t pay proper attention to the story.   I was sad about it, absolutely.  And then it faded from memory.

Turns out my local Whole Foods market has been supporting the co-op.  It stocks the produce and it is a pick-up point for CSA boxes.  In fact, I’m surrounded by opportunities to partake. There are pick-up points at farmers markets in my neighborhood as well as the extremely near-by Figueroa Produce.  I’ve got no excuses for not supporting the SCFCSA coop.

The wife and I are pretty excited about it.  We’ve looking into CSA before, but the only near-by one we found was a purchase-by-the-season dealio and we just couldn’t make the cash outlay.   There’s no membership with the SCFCSA.  You can purchase by the week, month, or season.  And there are different levels of payment.  For a few extra dollars you can support the cooperative’s administrative expenses or sponsor a box for a needy family.

I’m especially excited about have super-fresh veggies to play with. I’ll need to be creative to use up the box.  An excuse to make new recipes!   The freshest food means we get the best possible nutrition.  It’s local so there is less environmental footprint.  It supports a community.  Really, I couldn’t be more pleased.  It increases my motivation to eat a plant-based diet.

There will be a lot of food to play with in this week’s box: several varieties of chard and kale, a couple of varieties of beets, lettuces, broccoli, red onion, and new-to-me tatsoi and kohlrabi.  I suspect it will be so much food that this family of three may only need to get a box every other week.   Then again, raw foodists and ETL adherents do tend to eat a helluva lot of veggies.   One big rule: no compost! We’ll need to figure out how to get it all eaten.  Worst case scenario: juice baby juice.

I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.