August 2008

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

Connecting people and food

Marianne Battistone’s CSA grew out of her own interest in health and nutrition. A former dancer and longtime fitness consultant, she commutes to New York as a contributing editor on health and fitness at Self magazine. She and her husband, Philip Norwood, first put in eight beds of plants to feed themselves healthfully, then decided to sell their produce, grown without synthetic chemicals, directly through a CSA.

It’s that interest in healthy eating that’s driving the current popularity of CSAs, says Sammy Koenigsberg, whose farm is certified organic. “People in CSAs know more about where their food comes from than even people who shop with us at the farmers market,” he says. “They’ve been to the farm.” New Town requires new members to take a farm tour. Before logistics prevented it, some members worked in the fields in exchange for a discount.
Michelle Leek, a CSA member of Laughing Owl Farm, works one day a week in the field on the farm's grounds near Richfield in northern Stanly County. The rest of the week she spends in sales with Grateful Growers Farm, a specialist in naturally grown poultry and pork located in Denver, N.C. At Laughing Owl, she says, “I weed and prune. And play with the geese.”

Connecting consumers with the source of their food was one of the reasons the Koenigsbergs pioneered their CSA back in 1990. “If people knew their food came from the soil, they’d care more about the soil,” says Koenigsberg. That disconnection, he believes, is behind many of the problems that beset the environment. Believing that CSAs have a communications role, he sends out a weekly newsletter to members. It touches on agricultural issues but also educates in another way, familiarizing people with foods they’ve never seen before. Being small, the farms that supply CSAs can afford to experiment, and the gourmet restaurants that many of them supply often demand it.

Koenigsberg grows 80 to 90 different things. When a CSA member opens a box, he or she may find kohlrabi, Koenigsberg says, “or a weird potato. Fennel.”

At the Tailgate market, Michelle Leek was picking up, among other things, long fronds called garlic scapes, which Dean Mullis explained were the top part of the garlic plant, used in salads.

And Laura Benoit confessed that her weekly grab-bag of goodies from Laughing Owl is putting a new taste in her life—radishes. “They’re growing on me slowly,” she admitted.

Hannah Miller is a Carolina Country contributing writer who lives in Charlotte.