The CSA Packing Assembly Line
This is CSA Week, a week for celebrating CSAs and encouraging people to join one. Our CSA is open to join at any point, but for farms with a shorter, more distinct farming season, it’s a key time to focus on advertising and signing people up. I encourage anyone who is interested to try out our CSA, or a CSA that’s close to you, if not in the area. And encourage your friends, family, and coworkers.
That being said, CSAs aren’t right for everyone. For years, I’ve thought about the idea of “CSA people” a term used by some UC Davis CSA researchers (who I worked with in college!) to describe people who are “willing to subject their preferences to a single, farm-based market outlet directly tied to the seasons.” Which means: 1) eating what is seasonally available 2) lack of choice in selection 3) cooking with whole ingredients (and all that that entails – including time and equipment) 4) having to get your produce somewhere else from the rest of your food 5) paying in advance.
All five of these conditions run counter to today’s food system, which is built around year-round availability to everything, the idea that more choice leads to higher satisfaction, processed food, and less time and money for food purchasing and preparation. So being in a CSA is a somewhat radical act, not just an agricultural one (as Wendell Berry describes it)!
Those researchers have a more positive way to define this group of people! “CSA people enjoy food-related activities, have value systems that prioritize collective benefits of CSA in addition to personal ones, experience lack of produce choice positively, have regular monetary reserves for pre-payment, and can allocate sufficient household labor to cooking from scratch and learning how to cook novel produce.” This is true of our members. We did a big survey in 2024, and many people reported that they liked not needing to make choices about their produce. In a world filled with so many daily decisions, they appreciate the respite. They liked “reliably high-quality produce,” exposure to new things, and the element of surprise that comes with each box.
Some 2025 CSA Boxes
Taking a step back from the specific contents of each box are the bigger values that come with being in a CSA. Full Belly CSA members said they like being part of a community and knowing about their food. They (you!) want to know the growing conditions, people, environment, values and who they are supporting. They value that our produce is organic and good quality, that we’re local, and that they have a connection to a specific farm.
After this fairly nerdy, intellectual discussion, I wanted to observe this CSA Week by sharing two resources from our CSA members. After all, almost everyone reading this already has chosen to be in our CSA, probably for one of the reasons already stated. Joining is easy, staying isn’t; it requires a slightly different way of cooking than what “supermarket people” or even “farmers market people” do. There’s advice online about how to use your CSA produce, like this one and this one, plus some humorous takes (including this cartoon from the New Yorker) but the best advice comes from people familiar with our CSA, right? You may have different tips and tricks – if so, share them with us!
First, here’re some tips from Leslie, who’s been in the CSA since (at least) the early 2000s:
- You must be organized and *plan your weekly meals.* I can’t stress this enough! This is actually the key because people don’t know how to use all their ingredients and/or they don’t really cook much or they don’t have enough experience or lack the time bc of busy schedules. So in order to use up their ingredients, they really need to plan meals out.
- You have to be flexible and learn to be creative: you are going to get things in your box you’re unfamiliar with and you’re going to get some of the same things each week. Therefore, you need to get cookbooks, or look up recipes online, take cooking classes if that helps you, and learn to cook a variety of cuisines (essential!). I cook every type of food because of the CSA: Asian, French, Italian, Indian, California cuisine, everything. That is the greatest gift the CSA has given me — the ability to be more creative in what I make and eat, exposes me to different cultures and cuisines, and has made me more flexible in what I cook and also makes me healthier because it’s a varied diet.
- Rely on recipes — have found the NYTimes Cooking section online to be the most helpful. I’ve been cooking for a very long time, have plenty of cookbooks and experience, but I still look recipes up online and plan my meals around what I have and what I’ll get from Full Belly. But I’ve found the NYT cooking section to be the best for at least, my needs and making interesting really good dishes because they have a variety of people from different backgrounds contributing recipes. Just look for the highest rated recipes for whatever you make and be sure to read the comments. The comments are always really helpful to tweak or point out things in each recipe to either improve them or enhance them.
- If your life is too busy and you just can’t plan that often, then only get a box every few weeks or once a month or whatever is available and works. Key is always to be flexible though.
And then Karen, another long-time CSA member, wrote:
I’ve been giving myself a new challenge to find a variety of good greens recipes that make me WANT to eat the greens (broccoli rabe, turnip greens, arugula, collards, Swiss chard, bok choi) and I have been successful! It’s so much better to enjoy the greens rather than being annoyed by them! For me, the thing is variety— I was getting tired of always pulling out the garlic and olive oil and sautéing them. Delicious, but too much of the same. I used a recent rainy day to work on a compilation of recipes for greens. Thank you for providing this challenge!
Karen generously shared her compilation of recipes for greens – you can view that list here!
What’re your CSA tips and tricks? Your favorite recipes?
Elaine Swiedler, CSA Manager
Join us at this Sunday’s Almond Festival! We’ll be in Rumsey with a market stand and pizza! More info here.
