Sherdie

I thought I’d posted about this before but a quick search says no. Maybe it was at the old place; I’m too lazy to check. In the comments of the choko post, me ma asked what this CSA thing was. CSA = Community Supported Agriculture. No, it’s not going out and digging up your own potatoes – the idea is that farmers sell their produce directly to the customers. Kind of like a farmer’s market in a box.

The Architect and I have been using Food Connect, the (only?) Brisbane CSA enterprise, for… a long time now, so long, in fact, that neither of us can remember how long it’s been. I’d say more than a year, but probably not two years.

How it works:

Food Connect gets food from a range of local farmers, divvies it up and dispatches it around the city (to “City Cousins”), all depending on how many people have ordered. You subscribe to Food Connect for a number of deliveries of a certain type. At the moment we have 13 deliveries of a single veg box up our sleeve, which we get once a fortnight, and add onto things like fruit, honey, olive oil or extra vegies as needed. There’s a nifty online ordering system now which makes the adding on a lot easier, as well as pausing or moving our delivery (for when we go away). The delivery gets taken to my nominated “City Cousin” on a certain day, and I go and pick it up. Our single veg box comes loaded with locally grown, mostly organic veg (click here for more detail). It lasts us a fortnight because we tend to eat at home only four nights a week. We also tried the medium veg and the mixed mini – but the single veg with fruit as an optional extra works best for us.

Why it might not be for you:

Starting out, I was most worried about the lack of ‘choice’. What comes in the box is what you get, which can be a weird concept when we’re used to an overwhelming array of choices, especially when you’re the customer. I adjusted pretty quickly; there’s a good range and mix of things in the box and it’s easy enough to add extras if you need them. We’ll pick up other things if we need them for a specific dish or event, either from the supermarket or the markets, but that’s pretty rare. Now that I’m used to it, I actually like the convenience and the challenge of it. I’ve learnt how to cook with a bunch of things I wouldn’t have chosen – like beetroot and radish – and cook new things with vegies I’m familiar with. Having said all that, if you have a lot of likes and dislikes, or the idea of not being able to choose freaks you out, this might not be the way for you.

Something else that might bother people is the look of the produce. Anyone with a vegie patch or fruit trees at home will (I imagine) be familiar with the bumps and pits and spots that turn up on normal produce. The taste is fine and there’s nothing wrong with the produce – but people used to seeing row upon row of shiny, unblemished fruit and veg at the supermarket might get a bit of a surprise. Twice we’ve had a piece of rotten veg in the box that went beyond what I’d consider acceptable, but apart from that it’s all fine (and twice in about 50 deliveries isn’t too bad). Both times were in the middle of summer and a prolonged wet season in south east Queensland, so I can understand how that happened, as well.

Finally, it’s seasonal. I like that – I always tried to buy what was in season anyway – but if you’re one to lust after lettuce in August or crave snow peas in December, again, maybe this isn’t for you.

Why it’s good:

The main benefit is the taste. We started off, as you do, with a four week trial. In the very first box, there were some carrots. Those carrots were the best carrots either of us had eaten since… who knows. In that moment we decided that we’d give this thing a proper try. Far out. How much better life is with good tasting food. Plus our diet is generally better – we eat plenty of vegetables, and we hardly ever have to buy tasteless, hard supermarket veg (and when we do, we are reminded how lucky we are to have an option that gives us vegies that actually taste like vegies!).

The way the system works, you pay a set price in advance – which means a big chunk of our food costs are stable as well as paid ahead for a few months. If we both lost our jobs tomorrow, we could still eat! And it makes budgeting for food pretty easy, because I know that each fortnight we’ll pay $36 and have enough veg to last a fortnight.

It’s more convenient (for us) than going to the markets. I chose the City Cousin closest to my work, and it’s a simple matter to swing past on the way home. The irony hasn’t escaped me that I drive to work on “Food Connect day”. I bussed it a couple of times and it made the whole thing feel really difficult and annoying; my general rule when making lifestyle changes like this is that if it feels difficult, I won’t stick to it, so I do what I can to make it feel easy.

And finally, there’re the bigger reasons to do it. Supporting local farmers and helping to make their businesses sustainable. Doing something to combat the stranglehold of the Coles and Woolworths duopoly. Buying local. Buying organic. All the environmental benefits that flow from those two. Hooray local action.

The end: I hope I didn’t get all preachy on ya

So that’s a bit about CSA. I see that Adelaide and Sydney have Food Connect now too. I tried to find CSAs in the ‘berra and Melbourne but there doesn’t seem to be a lot out there. Maybe in places that already have good farmers markets, it’s not so popular. Anyway. I like it. And that’s what it is.