Face to Face: The Community of CSA

by Paul Bela and Robin Verson of Hill and Hollow CSA

The story begins eight summers ago in the packing room of the northern Illinois certified organic farm Angelic Organics. Robin, a Chicago resident and organic consumer, was trading her labor for vegetables. The "working share" option offered by this farm allowed her to spend two weekends a month working on the farm in exchange for a weekly box of organically grown vegetables delivered to a neighborhood drop site in Chicago. Paul seeking peace and quiet along with fresh air had found that and more while working dawn to dusk as a hired hand. It took the crew of 5 every waking hour to plant, cultivate, harvest, package and deliver the vegetables needed to feed 180 "shareholders" who had signed up for the 20 week season of the Community Supported Agriculture program at the farm that year. The work was exhausting: 90 boxes of vegetables, full and half share sizes harvested and packaged for two different delivery days. We became immersed and for two people questioning current civilization, feeding people and growing food seemed the only logical thing to do.

In the fall of that year, Angelic Organics hosted its annual Field Day. Families drove 2 hours from Chicago to get a taste of farm life and see where their food was grown. Lunch was served in the field and children picked their own pumpkins for Halloween. Intelligent and fun, these "shareholders" were out of their element. We too were out of our element, shedding our urban skins and exploring the possibilities of life in rural America. Everyone was having the time of their lives and setting the stage for a new type of community–one that bridges the gap between urban and rural, one that reconnects people with the source of their food.

CSA Programs across the nation require their members to pay before they receive their food, usually during the winter months when farmers are planning and purchasing for the upcoming spring. People who are willing to spend a portion of their food budget in this alternative way have stabilized the financial situation of many small family farms and enabled a new generation of farmers to continue farming. Sharing a vision, each person uses food dollars or labor to make a difference. Urban and rural alike, people want a community. Around the farm the desire was for more than the certified organic food available in any number of downtown health food stores. Community Supported Agriculture is just that, more than anything you can ever buy in a store. It is a relationship with a farm, a farm family, farm laborers and neighbors who share a commitment to organic food. It is an opportunity to expand beyond the urban and rural boundaries. We experienced the thrill as this relationship was solidified for the Community of people around Angelic Organics.

This moment gave us the faith to follow our dream. A vision had emerged from the hours working side by side in the fields that summer. Our calling it appeared was to farm. The pursuit of this dream took us to Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia. Working on farms, traveling the countryside and exploring many different operations and cultures while saving money to purchase our own place. Drought-wise techniques we observed in Australia and hillside terracing in Indonesia both proved useful as we landed in Metcalfe County, KY, the place we found to begin our career as farmers. We planned to use the CSA model to bring life back to this abandoned farm and the plan worked. A group of interested and committed families in Nashville, TN believed in the program and in our ability to implement it. They invested in Hill and Hollow CSA before even the first seeds were sown. Our first delivery year was kept decidedly small. We wanted a human scaled farm that we could work by hand hoping to avoid some of the difficulties we observed and participated in on other farms: overwork, underpay and hopeless debt. We wanted to stand close to the origins of CSA, the Japanese system called teikei. This Japanese word means partnership or cooperation, it is often translated to mean food with the farmers face. From consumer to worker to producer, it seems that each must have a face and then the Community within Community Supported Agriculture is truly embraced.

Now we are the producers, we are the farm family and we spend all of our hours doing the best we can to feed the families that have invested in our farm. It is a thrill to share the bounty this farm has been able to produce. The land has responded to our toil. An abandoned farm has been reoccupied, replowed and resown. An empty barn is again full of hay, chickens, and goats. Life returns and life multiplies, our son was born here. This farm is now the center of a new community of people willing to share their lives, their labor, their food dollars and their commitment to a healthy and sustainable agricultural practice. CSA "is not only a practical idea but also a dynamic philosophy to make people think of a better way of life either as a producer or as a consumer through their interaction."[1]

[1]Japan Organic Agriculture Association, Country Report for First IFOAM Conference, August 1993.