I’m a devoted Fairway shopper, but it kills me not to buy produce directly from a farmer, especially in the summer. Not because I have newly swallowed the Pollan-Waters-Bittman Kool-Aid (respect, yo). I’m from the South, a scant generation removed from grandparents who raised all of their food. Even after they moved off the farm, my grandparents still had a garden. We didn’t call it farm-to-table. Grandpa just went down to the garden before supper.
There must be a word for when you know you have it good, and you don’t think it could ever be otherwise. And then I moved to the New York.
The first year brought a new heartache each month. Strawberries in May? No. Corn in June? Ha. Tomatoes with the Fourth of July? Never. In desperation, I bought hot-house tomatoes from Canada. Cruel joke! Maybe I should plant a garden in my sink… for the roaches and mice. Or join a community garden… and grow a ton of shade-loving hostas between the tall buildings. And then I remembered there were CSA’s in the South. Why not here?
In the South, CSA is a loaded acronym. But for a tomato-deprived girl stranded in strange latitudes, CSA also stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It works like this: customers buy a share with a farmer, who pools the money (with his or her own) to buy seed for the coming season. The farmer nurtures and harvests the crops and delivers them to shareholders during the growing season. Much better than babying rosemary in my sink.
So, three years ago I crossed my fingers and mailed a check for a small share to J&A Farm in Goshen, New York. Because this is New York, I chose J&A mostly for their convenient drop-off site in Manhattan. But I was an investor, too. I did my homework on their farming practices and the variety of crops produced in a season. And then I got invested.

csa harvest, August 2013