Today’s your day to pick up your food box from a corner business, community garden, or farmers’ market stall, one of the expanding new pickup points for members buying local produce and food through a community-supported agriculture (CSA) harvest subscription program. Depending on which CSA you belong to, what awaits inside your pre-packed box is either the freshest seasonal picks from the local farmer/rancher/fisher/maker or the seasonal items selected from a website earlier in the week.

Freshness Matters

The CSA business model has been around for years, experiencing a boom over the past year with new options for personalization and delivery. Today, CSAs bring both farm and local maker goodness straight into your home, or to a nearby pickup location. No trip in a freight truck, no warehouse storage delays and no circling the aisles in supermarkets. Your dollar goes right to the farmer who grew your food, and you’re getting the freshest food possible—like harvested-just-a-few-hours-ago fresh.

In today’s atmosphere of uncertainty, local CSAs have stepped up to the plate to put on our plates an astounding variety of fresh and healthy food; the process has made our community more resilient by nurturing direct relationships between producers and consumers. “The large-scale global food system, especially at the beginning of this pandemic, really failed,” says Spade & Plow co-founder Sam Thorp. “People started turning to the local food systems, which emphasized how important it is to do what we do in order to continue to feed people all the time, not just through a pandemic.”  For Spade & Plow this meant serving more CSA member deliveries, and helping low-income families with access to fresh local produce through USDA grants.

What’s seasonal and fresh also spotlights the expanded local options for what is organic and sustainably raised. Sea Forager, for example, selects only sustainably caught Bay Area seafood, packing their boxes with fresh fish fillets, shellfish and the occasional small, whole fish. It’s never the same twice. After all, what’s in the day’s catch remains a mystery until it’s pulled from the water. “Members get to experience a range of what’s happening that season,” says Lombard, Sea Forager’s co-founder. “And they get to get hip to different species they may not have cooked with before. People often don’t know what they’re getting until the day of delivery because it’s so fresh. It is a little bit of an ‘Iron Chef’ experience. We’re encouraging people to get adventurous, and adventurous cooks love us.”

Making New Foods Approachable

Making cooking with unfamiliar ingredients accessible to members is a top priority for CSAs. Most post recipes on their websites and social media. Photos on Sea Forager’s Instagram show members having fun with their seafood, artfully preparing Manila clams or deftly simmering paella over a fire pit. Markegard Family Grass-Fed Meat, a leader in regenerative ranching practices based out of Half Moon Bay, has added tasty meat rub recipes and barbecue tips to its website. “We worked with a chef who was on furlough to create easy-to-use recipes for people,” says rancher Doniga Markegard, “so they could start to learn new ways to cook healthy food for their family at home.”

The surprise factor of what awaits inside each box is definitely one of CSA’s allures. Along with the benefits of getting to know your food producers—and the fact that your food dollars support them directly, no middlemen or warehouses necessary—opening a CSA box is always cause for excitement. Even if you have preselected your farm-fresh produce, farms sometimes partner with local businesses to add a little variety. For example, expect summer CSA boxes from Spade & Plow to brim with various combinations of colorful heirloom tomatoes, sweet potatoes and mixes of baby greens. There’s also an option to add-on pasture-raised eggs, roasted coffee and baked bread—the makings of a mighty tasty brunch!

Still, not all surprises are good ones. “We realized people will not sign up just for kale,” says Tera Farm founder Sheena Vaidyanathan, “so we increased our box variety to about 30 products, vegetables and some fruit.” To do so, Tera Farm, a CSA created by Silicon Valley volunteers, helped Salinas Valley wholesale farmers weather pandemic losses by selling directly to consumers and expanding the variety of crops in their fields. Tera Farm also evolved how they take orders, going from group text messaging to an online order form to now providing a full-fledged e-commerce website where customers can fully customize their orders. Further, in addition to diversifying what they grow, Tera Farm farmers are also partnering with local “friend farmers” to increase the variety of organic produce available.

But folks shall not live by farm-fresh produce alone, at least for the omnivores among us. Ranchers and fisheries are also in the CSA game making local meat and seafood accessible throughout the Bay Area. Markegard Family Grass-Fed runs its own CSA and also partners with Fifth Crow Farm’s CSA as a meat add-on to their produce selection. CSA members get first pick of special meat cuts like bacon and regularly receive quality cuts of grass-fed beef, lamb, pork and chicken.

“Members get to experience a range of what’s happening that season. And they get to get hip to different species they may not have cooked with before.”

—Camille Lombard, Sea Forager

Building Community

However you choose to participate, being a CSA member means you’re invested in local farms, ranches and maker businesses. Many CSAs offer tours so members can see how their produce is sustainably grown and the animals ethically treated. “Most members have been out to the ranch, so they can see for themselves how the food is raised,” says Markegard. “They can really trust that the product they are getting is healthy, and the animals were raised well.” Along with a weekly box of fresh food, CSA members receive communications from their farmers, building a deeper sense of community. Many CSAs send out frequent e-newsletters with farm updates, info on what’s growing and creative ideas for preparing ingredients. Members also get priority access to popular items, discounted rates on additional ingredients and invites to special events like sea chantey sing-alongs. (You heard it here first.)

Plus the benefits flow both ways. The CSA subscription model gives farms a reliable revenue stream to plan what to plant and save for farm upgrades. Tera Farm helped two female-owned small farms start CSAs when they lost wholesale opportunities during the pandemic. The farmers saved some of their income and felt secure enough to make investment purchases for their farms. One bought a new tractor and the other finished a greenhouse just in time to help fill summer CSA boxes with sweet strawberries, blackberries and hot peppers.

Gone are the days of the mystery CSA farm box and the behind-the-scenes local farmers and makers—CSAs have proven to be the perfect way to get season’s freshest picks and build a direct relationship with what’s growing and who is growing it. Plus you’ll support a local, healthy thriving food and drink community ready to serve. That’s the freshest news in town!