August 2008

• Introduction
• The popularity of local food
• Electric co-ops are “partners”
• Connecting people and food
• Download the full article as a

Electric co-ops are “partners”

An unseen partner of the farms as they meet the growing CSA demand are the electric co-ops in their areas. Produce is cooled by air-conditioning units and refrigerated coolers during North Carolina’s sweltering summers. Irrigation lines are powered by pumps. And for some farmers, electricity runs the golf carts and scooters used to navigate their acreage.

At Laughing Owl, New Town and Poplar Ridge, the co-op is Union Power Cooperative in Monroe. French Broad Electric Membership in Marshall serves Firefly Farm.

At New Town, a golf cart and well pump run on electricity from Union Power. “Today,” says Koenigsberg, “we have everything we picked in a room of the barn with an air conditioning unit.” At Firefly, “we start our peppers and tomatoes early” before the summer sun can warm them, says Gibbs. Electricity offers both heat and light for germination in their greenhouse.

At Firefly, Laughing Owl and Poplar Ridge, coolers keep the produce fresh until it can be dropped off or picked up. “Broccoli must be on ice and refrigerated,” notes Marianne Battistone, who with her husband, Philip Norwood, runs Poplar Ridge. Poplar Ridge offers a choice of CSAs: the produce CSA, and also a cut-flower CSA, with the flowers grown on the farm and chilled, along with the produce, in an 8 by 10-foot refrigerated unit. The farm also offers poultry, eggs and pork on a CSA basis. They’re raised by other farmers and kept cool in Poplar Ridge’s unit.

“I’m turning this whole farm electric,” Battistone vowed as she watched gas prices rise earlier this year. At $4 per gallon, she said, gas and diesel for the farm would cost her $150 a week. “If you hope to break even, the last thing you need is to spend $150 a week in gas.”

She already had taken steps. Employees park their vehicles and make their way across the farm on bicycles. She herself rides a battery-powered scooter, and she planned to order another. An ATV that pulls a trailer to haul manure to Poplar Ridge’s compost heap would be traded in for two electric carts, she said.

Battistone, who grows for 70 CSA customers, had high praise for Union Power. “When we have problems they come fast,” she said. She has the direct phone numbers of employees to call in case of emergencies, she said. “We know them by name. You can’t imagine how important that is to me.”