Navigating a modern landscape of big box grocery stores, quickie marts and fast food chains, it might feel like we’re set up for dietary failure. Although more and more stores are offering local, organic options, they sometimes come with a price tag that can steer us right back to the shelves of cheap, highly processed boxed foods. Luckily, a group of modern visionaries has your wallet, your health and waste line in mind. Look no further than your local farmers.
In recent years, the trend toward providing healthy, affordable food has really gained momentum. Not only can you enjoy fresh, wholesome and, sometimes, organic food at farmers markets, but you can also buy into a farm by purchasing a season’s share for your family before each year’s harvest. While it isn’t a new concept, community-supported agriculture (CSA) has been given new life in recent years, as people are seeking alternatives to unhealthy manufactured food products.
“The CSA movement is really getting a lot of press,” says Mike Nolan of Earth Spring Farm, located in Gardners in Adams County. “There are more and more people [getting involved in] CSAs.”
Within the CSA framework, customers pay upfront for their entire season’s share, which helps farmers cover costs ahead of time. Each week, members pick up weekly or biweekly shares (or CSA boxes) directly from the farm or at designated drop-off sites. As part of their share, members enjoy fresh vegetables, meat, eggs, milk, cheese, honey, bread and other food items at a cost that is competitive to the prices in grocery stores, while getting to know their farmer and knowing where and how their food is produced.
Fresh Swiss chard being tended to at Joshua Farm.
“It is important for all communities to have access to CSAs,” says Elaine Lemmon, of Everblossom Farm, East Berlin. “The food a person receives from a CSA share will almost always be fresher, more nutritious and better tasting than foods they would buy from a grocer that have been sourced from a great distance and potentially grown or raised irresponsibly.”
While living in a city can cut back your healthy, whole food options, the greater Harrisburg region is rich with agriculture and farmers who are ready to meet your healthy living needs through CSAs. Fresh, whole food is even growing within one neighborhood of the city.
CSA and the City
Harrisburg’s own Joshua Farm, the only operating urban farm in the city, is hard at work growing 35 varieties of organic vegetables to pack in CSA boxes for its 40 members. The Allison Hill neighborhood farm also serves as a drop-off point for other area farms and businesses that produce raw milk and cheese, eggs, meat, fruits, bread and baked goods.
“I wanted to offer a CSA because I had been a member of a CSA before I started farming,” says Kirsten Reinford of Joshua Farm. “I liked the connection I developed with the farm and the sense that I was providing support to a farmer and getting real benefits from that farm. Helping people to see the value of shortening the distance from farm to plate is something that is important to me.”
Reinford also believes that minimizing the producer-to-consumer gap helps communities live more sustainably and in accordance with the natural order of our planet. While most people in the United States get food from supermarkets that source their products from all over the country and the world, the local food movement continues to grow. And the people of Harrisburg are happily participating.
Reinford says that Joshua Farm has been attracting more and more consumers to their CSA—so much so that they have had to turn people away in recent years. But she is exhilarated by how the demand is helping to motivate social change.
“Every time you buy something, you are casting a vote for the kind of food system you want,” she says. “Over the decades, money has been put into fast, processed food. If we want a different system, people have to keep on voting to make that system work.”
More than just food
When you walk into a grocery store and buy a package of chicken, you aren’t buying it directly from the farmer who produced it. In fact, that chicken probably came from a factory farm, which pump out poultry at a rapid rate, unnaturally fattening their animals and often raising them in less-than-sanitary conditions. But, when you see food growing or animals grazing on a farm, or when you shake your farmer’s hand at a farmers market, you begin to get the backstory of your food. Forming relationships, and sometimes, close friendships with your food producer is another perk grocery stores don’t offer.
Twenty years ago, Terra and Mike Brownback started a CSA at their family-owned Spiral Path Farm in Loysville to bridge the gap between food source and consumer and to form personal bonds with their neighbors. “We felt it was going to be a wonderful relationship between the farm and its members, allowing us to be a direct contact to our customers and allowing our customers to have their own personal connection to the farm,” says Terra Brownback.
Nate Thomas of Breakaway Farm in Mount Joy enjoys greeting customers on his “beyond organic” farm, which offers grass-fed beef, lamb and goat; pastured pork and poultry; and wild-caught fish. “Most of our CSA customers choose to pick up at the farm,” he says. “They look at it as an opportunity to make a connection. They bring their kids and grandkids, who get to play with baby animals.”
In Duncannon, Yeehaw Farm offers a whole-diet CSA, providing its members with all-natural meats, vegetables, raw milk and cheese, eggs, some fruits, grains and value-added products. According to Judi Radel, through their CSA, the family has gotten to know their customers more intimately than they previously could by just selling their food at farmers markets.
“Running the whole-diet CSA allows us to have frequent interactions with our members,” she says. “I love that they come to our farm to pick up their food. I love that we are ‘their’ farmer.”
Locally shared perks
Operating under a local business model, CSAs provide farmers and the local economy with certain advantages that are not apparent in a corporate food structure.
“Farmers are afforded the benefit of a stable income that does not rely on government subsides,” says Lemmon.
She also emphasizes that local economies stabilize and thrive when people purchase food items from their local farmers. “Every dollar that stays in a community’s local area is equivalent to $10. Buying locally produced goods is the fastest way to secure our local economies.”
Reinford agrees. “As with any small business, dollars that are spent here, stay here and multiply, as opposed to going to line the pockets of a CEO or multinational corporation with a different tax structure,” she says.
Thomas enjoys that the upfront income from his CSA allows his farm to financially and logistically plan ahead for the season. “Farmers have so many costs during seasonal production. We like [our CSA] because it gives us a slug of money into our cash flow. [CSAs also help] get more people involved in making investments in their local economy, communities and in their own health.”
Many farmers view CSAs as a necessary business offering to start new farming ventures and to keep existing farm operations afloat during hard economic times, when many people still gravitate to grocery stores over farms. “CSAs help the farmers get established,” says Nolan. “The CSA actually helps us to make a living.”
For Brooks Smith, the CSA model allows his Newport farm, North Mountain Pastures, to enjoy guaranteed sales that it might not otherwise earn at market. “Before a farmers market, we might pack our van with $3,000 worth of food and sell about $500,” he explains. “The energy you put into that market with packing and driving can [equal] a 10-hour day, and you might not sell a quarter of what you take with you. Any way that can be simplified will help the farmer focus on what he or she wants to do, which is production.”
By voting with their dollars, CSA members not only invest in local farm businesses and the local economy, but they also invest in their own health. Brownback says that some of the most rewarding aspects of Spiral Path Farm’s CSA are the enriching learning experiences people enjoy as a byproduct of their CSA membership.
“[Our CSA members] have opportunities to visit our farm, which is beneficial to families and children,” she says. “If you start it early, kids gets an expanded opportunity to see and eat healthy food at a young age.”
Bringing real foods to a food desert
Like most other major metropolitan areas, Harrisburg isn’t a lush, green oasis where whole fruits and vegetables grow in abundance and livestock graze the land. Instead, processed, factory-farmed and mass-produced food products reign. Because vital, nourishing foods are scarce within city limits, farmers from surrounding areas are helping to fill a need for locally grown, real food through CSA offerings.
“It is very important that Harrisburg residents have access to CSAs because the Harrisburg area is considered a food desert,” says Radel. “As rich as Pennsylvania is with agriculture of many forms, most farming operations ship their food production out of the area—even out of the state and beyond.”
Parts of Harrisburg may have limited immediate access to fresh, healthy, whole foods, but the central Pennsylvanian landscape is home to a myriad of working farms, many of which offer CSAs. And a good portion of these farms have CSA drop-off points in Harrisburg, Camp Hill, Carlisle, Mechanicsburg and other neighboring towns. Participating as a member of a CSA has never been so accessible, and it can have countless positive impacts on a community’s health, social exchanges, local economy and natural environment.
For Reinford, running Joshua Farm’s urban CSA is part of a greater goal to help change Harrisburg residents’ minds about how they live, what they put into their bodies, how they treat the environment and how they interact with each other.
“I hope we are part of their overall approach to living gently and being good stewards of the world and the creation we are asked to care for,” she says. “A lot of people are motivated toward CSAs, not only because of fresh food, but also because [the food] is grown sustainably. I hope that our CSA can be part of that. I also hope that our members can feel a connection with our farm, but also with each other.”
