What’s the photo above of? It’s an extreme closeup of purple cauliflower, taken by CSA member and longtime CSA host Dave.
This week is National CSA Week – established in 2021 as a week for celebrating and promoting CSAs. The Full Belly Farm CSA has been operating since 1992, so in many ways, the past 1,600+ weeks have been CSA weeks. That feat alone is worth acknowledging!
We’re going to start off celebrating with two letters. First is one that we received this December:
Dear Full Belly,
We will be moving out of state in early January, so sadly I am writing to cancel our CSA subscription starting January 1. We would like to donate the remainder of the boxes we’ve paid for.
We want to thank everyone at Full Belly for nourishing our family with delicious food for decades, and let you know how important Full Belly has been to our family. We joined the Full Belly CSA in the late 90s, as a young unmarried couple, still in school. We’ve been members ever since, with a few breaks when we lived outside of the delivery area. At first we struggled to eat many of the veggies but over time we found ways to love almost all of them – beets in risotto, mustard greens in potato goat cheese quesadillas, pickled turnips as a topping for banh mi. For the few veggies we haven’t learned to love, we know which of our neighbors are happy to have them delivered to their front porches.
Our daughters, now young adults, have eaten Full Belly produce their whole lives. The first vegetable they learned to love was Full Belly carrots. They called them “farm carrots,” and when they saw us packing carrots in their lunches they would ask “Are those farm carrots?” During the frustrating years when they didn’t like vegetables, our CSA subscription motivated us to keep putting a variety of veggies on the table, and over time our daughters learned to enjoy them. Our weekly box was the basis of our meal planning each week, and helped answer the exhausting “What’s for dinner?” question. We have attended open farm days and Hoes Down as a family and are grateful to have been invited to share the beauty of the farm and the people who work there.
Thank you for feeding our family.
With gratitude,
Ellen, John, Lela, and Anna
My parents joined the CSA 20 years ago and I remember having my first Full Belly carrots and being blown away. I can’t claim it was a straight shot from that first carrot to working here today, but clearly the experience had an impact.
Now let’s rewind to October 1994. That marked when the farm started including a copy of the Beet in the boxes (once a month!) instead of just posting a copy at the pick up sites, and it’s the oldest Beet that we have in the office. You can read a copy of that Beet here.
Since 1994, there have been changes: the farm and CSA have grown, we send a weekly newsletter (via email), the crops going into the boxes, and the boxes themselves have changed (we started using the reusable “Stop Waste” boxes about 10 years ago), to name a few. However the core values of the farm and the motivation for running a CSA have not. We are incredibly proud that we feed over 1,000 families a week and have a direct relationship with them. According to our CSA member survey last year, the top three things that our CSA members value are getting (1) local, (2) organic, and (3) high quality produce, followed by (4) connection to a specific farm and (5) exposure to new produce. Someone wrote “I have confidence that I know where my food came from, that it was grown with care, and that it is high quality.”
The lack of control and choice inherent in our CSA model is a unique way to get produce, and might not be for everyone. However, the surprise element that comes with us choosing the boxes was highlighted as a good thing by many people in the survey. Many, many people view it as a good challenge that makes them more creative and adventurous cooks, more connected to the seasons, and alleviated from “the endless decision fatigue of life!”
With over 30 years of history, photos, recipes, stories, and letters, we could go on and on, but instead, we’ll wrap it up with more purple cauliflower photos sent to us by CSA members. How often can you say that grocery store produce was so exciting that it moved you to take photos? In that vein, make sure to check out the two Recipes of the Week (this one and this one) both from CSA members, a roasted cauliflower dish and the soup in the photo above (note from Elisa: “This is the soup with a few squeezes of fresh lemon. The lemon creates the pink! A very fun experiment”). Whenever you have a recipe or tip for prepping, storing, or cooking, don’t hesitate to share it with us, as these folks did. Or you can tag us on Instagram!
AND – send us your “vintage” CSA photos! We’re curious to see how far back in time we can get! The 90s? Vintage is a relative term though; if you’re a new member, you’re welcome to contribute too, even if you just got your first box last week.
Regardless of if you’re a photo-taking person or not, we definitely encourage you to spread the word to your friends and family about what they’re missing by not being part of a CSA!
Elaine Swiedler, CSA Manager
