Lessons Learned: Things to Consider Before Signing Up for a CSA

First off, I need to remind people that neither I nor my husband work for or volunteer for Broad Branch Farm, nor do we personally know or are related to anyone at Broad Branch Farms. Yes I have met Brian and Anita Poeppel and their lovely and beautiful girls, Lucy, Susanna and Laura. I only know their names and faces from their site  (which they manage to keep relatively up-to-date despite the rigors of farming) and so knew with whom I was speaking without them necessarily knowing my name, having been fortunate enough to chat briefly with all of them during a pick up. (Check the 'meet the farmers' section of the site.)

I'm sure they would love to know each person who benefits from the fruits of their labour and be able to identify them by name, but I know that's not possible or reasonable. So, if/when I speak of them, please do not assume I'm in-the-know or a close friend. I just prefer to refer to people by their given names as 'he' and 'she' or 'they' can get a little murky after a while, particularly if speaking about multiple people.

Next, I encourage people to check out the farm's blog: http://broadbranchfarm.blogspot.com/ so you can see what's happening with the farm. This blog will be a great resource for them in many ways, not the least of which will be the transparency it will provide for people who are still trying to decide whether to participate in a CSA program or not. Once you read about the trials and tribulations of the daily grind on a farm, as well as the highs of seeing the healthy family, their beautiful livestock and the growth cycle of the vegetables, you can't help but feel that you're seeing the whole emotional spectrum of what a CSA has to offer, not merely the romanticized 'hippie tree-hugger' view that some people tend to cling to.

All that being said, here are things to consider before signing up for a CSA. Some of these we just 'knew', some we read about, and some we found out from our own experience. Your results may vary.

1. Do you even like vegetables? Sure this may seem like a silly question, but stop to think about it. Do you REALLY like vegetables? Do you eat them voluntarily or do you have to disguise them to force them down? Are you only eating veggies because you 'have to' due to a weight loss regimen/health issues/allergies/because you think you should? Can you only eat veggies when they're dripping with butter/cheese sauce/crispy coating/batter? I won't say which answers are 'good' or 'bad' (there's no 'good or bad' here) but you really should give a serious, honest, and sincere look at your lifestyle (or the lifestyle which you would like to adopt) and decide if a large sum of organic, locally produced vegetables are really what you want/need. If the veggies are simply going to go to waste, then perhaps you should consider something else.
2. Can you cook or can the person whose job it will be to prepare the vegetables actually cook? I don't mean 'can they make tacos' or 'can they shred a few things and call it a salad'. You are going to be faced with vegetables that you may or may not have ever heard of before, let alone tried. Do you have the basic culinary skills, as well as the interest and/or time to do the research needed to find out how to best cook the vegetables you'll get? Example: kohlrabi. I had heard of it, but never looked it up before, I had never seen it at a grocery store before and I couldn't recall ever seeing it at a Farmer's Market either. I didn't know if it was a tuber, a root veggie or what! I sure as hell didn't know how to cook one...and I ended up with a few dozen!  few basic Google searches gave me some good jumping off points, and I will be posting recipes later myself. But, for those still thinking about CSA, consider the reality: Will you have what it takes to cook the little buggers, whatever they turn out to be?
3. Are you too lazy to do proper Google searches? (not Bing, not Yahoo...Google. If you're a die-hard Bing or Yahoo user, I can't help you already. Yes, I'm a snob! :) ) Do you simply type in a few disjointed words and hope the Internet fairies will magically show you the way? Can you actually make the most out of 5 mins on the computer and come up with *something* useful, regardless of the topic? If you can handle the art of creative Google searching, then you will have a treasure trove of resources at your disposal when it comes to ideas for storage, preparation and menu ideas for your harvest bounty. Failure will likely result in lackluster meals, disappointment with the CSA and a general feeling of having wasted your money. This will, naturally, be your own damn fault.
4. Do you know what you want? This is another seemingly innocuous question but it's one that tripped me up while we were going through the research process. Hubby wanted veggies, I was kind of hoping for veggies and maybe eggs and/or meat. This difference in targets made the research we did a little stilted at first until, finally, the decision was made for us when all the meat and egg shares were taken. So, lesson learned: decide early, act early! (As it turns out, Broad Branch has all of the above but we were too late to get into the meat or egg shares. In hind sight, the egg shares may not have been a good idea as I go through weeks where I'll use a dozen a week, then I'll stop using them for a month. Wasting the eggs would have made me feel no end of guilty. As luck would have it, though, there was a week when some eggs hadn't been claimed so were sold on a first come/first served basis and I snagged a dozen. OMG wish I'd had the cash on me to grab 2 doz. The eggs were fabulous. That said, however, I stick to my statement that I'm glad we missed out. There would have been some eggs wasted, I'm sure. It's just as well that the eggs went elsewhere.)
5. Realistically, what's your schedule like? Are you a single or are you a couple, a household of 3, 4, 5? Are you roommates or 'alternative family'? Do all the adults work? Do the ones who work have to commute? Do the kids have extracurricular activities/time commitments? Do the adults have additional time commitments that need to be considered? I'll get more into this in a moment...
6. How much driving are you willing to do and how far are you willing to go? Obviously, unless you're picking up directly from the farm, you're probably going to have to deal with drop-off locations. These are usually decided by the farm based on their best estimates/experience as to which days will be feasible for the most people and in which areas. They have work to do. They can't drive all over hell's half acre to deliver to everyone. The longer they drive, the longer the farm goes without the hands needed to distribute the food. Driving all over also flies in the face of the whole 'local' idea. If you don't mind your veggies getting trucked in from all over, then perhaps CSA isn't really what you want. I'll get a little more into this one in a moment as well.
7. How are you going to use the CSA? Will this be a way to supplement your existing grocery shopping budget or will this be replacing part/all of your veggie portion of the grocery budget? Perhaps the price is too dear if this is going to be *in addition* to your pre-standing grocery budget. If you are looking to replace your produce purchases from the supermarket with the CSA, are you prepared to deal with the lack of/bizarre variety of the produce generated?
8. What will you do with the produce if you go on holiday? ('on vacation' to you Yanks. :) ) Most people don't really consider this when they're buying from the supermarket, but then they don't have a 22-week commitment to visit their greengrocer every week either. If you go away on summer holiday, you normally just don't buy extra food the days before the trip and you clean out the fridge and restock it when you get back. Trouble with the CSA is this: *you have already paid for the food!* Any food you don't use is not only, well, a waste, but you will have also wasted the money. In the case of our CSA, it's $22/week. Not much if you think of only one week, but what if you're gone for 2, 3, 4 weeks? What if you have a large household that needs 2 shares instead of one? That's starting to add up then, isn't it? Some CSA's we looked at were over 600$ per share and would have been 30$+ a month. Again, one week: big deal, right? Well, that's 3/4 of a tank of gas for the week. Are we all so rich and decadent that we can all just literally throw that kind of money away? I'd like to think not.

To really do yourself, your wallet, the farm and the environment some good, you really should consider these 9 questions before diving in to really get the full benefit of the CSA you (eventually?) sign up for. Make a list of 'wants' and 'needs' and do as much research as you can, but do it early. We signed up in May and missed out on some shares (like the aforementioned meat and eggs) as well as missed out on being able to consider other farms that may or may not have been a better fit for us, simply because all their shares were already spoken for by the time we'd even started our search.

Do yourself a favour and start considering your budget in January (while you're reeling from the Holiday bills!) and start nosing around the internet for farms in your state or province around February. That way you'll be ready for March/April to be able to sign up, depending on the sign up criteria for the farm you decide on. Also, if you are really determined to participate in a CSA during any given year, make sure you have a back up farm picked out in case your first choice runs out of shares before you have time to sign up. If you have to save up the $ before you can sign up, you naturally run the risk of the shares running out before you can feasibly submit your application. This can happen to anyone. 

Check if the farm you're interested in does installment payments. Broad Branch takes full payment at time of application *or* you can do a deposit of 100$, then 2 payments of 50% of the balance are due by a certain date. Also check if they take payment online. Some do, some are a little more Old School. Sometimes, being able to pay online is a great way to make sure you're not waiting for a check to clear before you can close out your books for the month. (Additional fees may apply if paying online, FYI.) Also be sure to ask, if you're paying with a check, when you can expect the check to be deposited by the farm. To be frank, Broad Branch took a month to deposit our check and that made me very antsy. In hindsight, I should have asked as I have asked that before of other vendors I have dealt with in the past. I have no idea why I didn't ask this particular time. My fault: lesson learned.

OK, back to points 5 and 6:

First off, for the sake of full disclosure...

I am fortunate enough to be a housewife. No kids, just a housewife with 2 cats. Not everyone has this luxury, and I consider myself truly fortunate to have a husband who lets me do the things I'm good at (organising, cleaning, cooking, arts n crafts) and who also has the means to keep  a roof over our head and clothes on our backs while I toodle around the house all day. 

Also, like many others who have dealt with the credit/housing/economic crunch, we have very little credit and don't have much in the way of savings. We *do* however, still have a roof over our heads that doesn't have a 'for sale by owner' or 'for sale: bank owned' in front of it. As the saying goes "there but for the grace of god"... I'll admit we came close, but we dodged that bullet. Others in our neighborhood were not nearly so lucky. *crosses fingers* Back to the topic at hand...

Re: Driving

I decided that the trip to Naperville wouldn't be so bad on a Friday since I have my own car and a schedule I can manipulate as I need. Friday pick ups are 3-5pm.  See what I missed there?

Friday!

3-5pm!!

From my doorstep to the Naperville Tennis Club, it's between 28 and 32 miles (45 - 51 km). What's supposed to be the fastest route is to take I-355 almost the whole way, and it should take ~47 mins. But wait, this is the Chicagoland area in summer which means: CONSTRUCTION!

90 minutes to get there, an hour to get back (traffic is always worse towards the city it seems.)

I found an alternate route which takes Sutton/IL-59 past Fermi Labs down to Naperville. Though traffic moves faster, it's still not a highway which means there are traffic lights. Lots of 'em. So the time is rather fixed in that it takes ~50 mins to get there and ~60 to get back (traffic from IL-59 to the turnoff onto I-88 is usually the culprit. 

I also have to deal with hot, sweaty, tired, eager-to-get-home drivers who may or may not be paying proper attention, something you see far more often (of course) on a Friday than any other day, especially if it's a long weekend. (Took me 3 hrs to get the CSA box the Friday before the 4th of July!) 

Do I wish I'd chosen a CSA with a closer pick-up location? Yes, absolutely. Do I regret our decision? Not at all. I've been happy with the vegetables and I've really enjoyed the few brief chats I've had with  Brian, Anita and their kids. They really are, as my father would say, '"Good People".

Re: Schedule
First: Do you know how much time it takes to wash a vegetable? I sure didn't. I do now! :)
You can't simply grab the lettuce/beet/carrot/whatever and peel it or chop it then use/eat it. You have to wash them, and some of these veggies will not only have dirt on them but also sand/pebbles/bits of other vegetation/bugs (oh yes, there will be bugs!)/etc. Leave yourself time to give leafy things a good rinse, tuber and roots a good scrubbing with a nail brush. Grit tastes nasty, I assure you.
(Oh, and if you're not sure on the best way to wash/prep a veggie, you know to just Google it, right? :) )

Second: The brakes on my car recently went bad. So bad that my car isn't safe to drive. Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, we just don't have the cushion for a sudden car repair. Being in the farcockteh (links to Yiddish glossary :) ) suburbs such as we are, I pretty much have to wait until hubby gets home to go *anywhere* as there are entire sections around here that don't even have sidewalks. He works waaaaaaay North of where we live so there's no way he gets home in time for me to grab the car and do the Friday CSA pick up. Fortunately, they have an alternate Saturday pick up time that I can use with little disruption to myself and/or the Poeppels. Needless to say, this requires some shifting around of the schedule on my part. As I said earlier, I'm a housewife, so I have more flexibility. Imagine if I worked, even part-time? *blink* I'd rather not think about the logistics, but I *am* very grateful we have options. Your results may vary.

Finally,

I know it seems like a lot of information to digest, but then it's a commitment. You are committing to help local agriculture and they are committing to making sure you have food every week. The farm owners can't just say 'Well, that didn't work. Let's give up!' if things start to go pear-shaped on them. You may or may not get great produce every week. There may be droughts, insects, floods, any number of bizarre disasters (natural or    man-made) that may affect the crops. You're not just buying food. Any schmo can do that at the supermarket. When you sign up for a CSA share, you are embarking on a journey, an adventure. You get to ride the tide with the farmers; cheering when they succeed, counting the losses when things don't work out the way they'd planned. Just remember that when things are lean, the season's been rough and things look bleak, that yes, you will have a hole in your bank account and you'll have to make alternative arrangements for veggies. The farmers have no such luxury. They will see everything, good or bad, outside their front windows every morning when they wake and every evening before they go to bed. This is why I can't stress enough the respect and esteem in which I hold the local farming community. They are hard-assed, persevering people who still manage to keep their optimism enough to face another season, when many others would have folded up and quit. By buying a share, you are choosing to join them, however briefly, on the roller coaster Mother Nature sets out for them. I hope you enjoy the ride.