CSA Group Delivery

Are you part of an organization / office / church / yoga studio etc. that may be interested in signing up for a CSA as a group? 

Here are the perks: 

        As one person alone, we are very powerful. As a group of people, we are even more powerful. There are things we can do together, that we can never do alone. The office delivery aspect of our CSA program allows for an effective partnership between two groups of people who agree to mutually support each other. Although we love the office drop off possibility, everyone is encouraged to sign up either through a group delivery, or individually. 

Here is how it works:

1. You let us know that your office, organization, church or group of friends is interested in learning more about the CSA.
2. We offer information, either through materials, or informal Q and A sessions or lunchtime presentations. 
3. You come together as a group and decide what types of shares you individually want.
4. Eight or more people ready to sign up and you sign up!
5. You get matched to a Fresh Start Farmer, who will be growing the food for your office all season long. 
6. You then get a weekly delivery to your office or organization space, at the same time each week. All produce is grown on the acre or half acre farmed by the farmer you are matched with. 
7. Take home your bag of fresh, local, organically grown vegetables:
8. Prepare some wonderful dishes
9. Serve them up
10. Enjoy! knowing that you are making the absolute best choices for your body, your family and friends, your community and your planet. 

A Complete CSA Toolkit

 

There are always ways to get more out of your CSA share. We will be here all season helping this be the year you learn more about eating locally and in season, more about sustainable growing practices, and more about the Somali, Sudanese, Latino and Burundian farmers that are part of Fresh Start Farms. 

 

I have compiled a list of links from around the web that i deem extra wonderful in their helpfulness. They range from sites on Somali culture, to the strangest looking vegetables in Maine. Take a look, and let us know what you think:

• The strangest looking (and coolest) veggies you may find in your share: http://www.takepart.com/photos/9-weirdest-farmers-market-veggies

• An excellent website about the Somali Community in Maine: https://wiki.colby.edu/display/AY298B/Home

• A Super Awesome Guide to Storing Produce for Freshness: http://www.thekitchn.com/a-guide-to-storing-fruits-vegetables-tip-roundup-176308

• A Trick to Revive Your Wilted Greens or Lettuce:

• Recipe Ideas By Season, including four vegetable strategies: http://www.wholeliving.com/136512/csa-recipes/@center/136755/green-home-guide#end
• Can it, Freeze it, Pickle it: http://www.csacoalition.org/resources/consumers/food-preservation/

Amazing cookbooks that show the truely beauty of eating in season:

Deborah Madison's Vegetable Literacy: http://deborahmadison.com

The Davis Farmers Market Cookbook: http://davisfarmersmarketcookbook.com/

Farmer Spotlight: Jabril Abdi

Farmer Spotlight:

Jabril Abdi

“Farming is good. They will know that when their stomachs are empty”

        “I was a farmer when I was young, and now I am a farmer again, I will always be a farmer. If anybody says that farms and farming is no good, they are wrong, and they will know that when their stomach is empty”. Jabril has been farming his whole life. When he arrived in Lewiston, he was told about the project and joined some of his friends out in the field. He already had knowledge, and familiarity with farming, it seemed natural for him to start planting seeds. Although the soil that he digs in here is different, and more consistent than the soil in Africa, which is in places red, white and brown”.

Although he has sold his product before too, here it is different: “Here you put everything out on the table, you have to advertise yourself” instead of just letting your product speak for you. That makes it hard to market here, but his children are involved with his business, especially the marketing end of it. When I asked him what his favorite part of his business is, he saw it all as interchangeable. He plants the seeds, he invests so that he can give at the markets in exchange for financial support. “I am happy to be at the market selling, it means that my investment is working, and people are lining up to support me” Lettuce, spinach, broccoli, potatoes, tomatoes, are his favorite, and most are new to him, but he knows that if you don’t have those on your table, costumers wont come by. “If my costumers come to my farm, I know they will be happy with what they see. I would love it if my costumers would tell their friends about me, and about our program. Let people support us, because even if you have nothing, you can put seeds into the ground”.

SEEDS!

What's Happening Right Now:

photo by Amy Temple

www.123rf.com

www.theinnovationdiaries.com

 Things are beginning to come to life around here. SEEDS, SEEDS, SEEDS! The seed delivery is in (!!!), and the greenhouse is starting to see movement behind the filmy walls.    The soil is being packed tightly into open trays, and tiny little onion seeds are starting to take root. Seeds are being painstakingly sorted into groups, so that farmers can being to plan, plot and plant, always thinking ahead to the growing season, always imagining market days and CSA delivery days, so that each  week has the full diversity of the season, and the full potential of the land, the sun and the rain.
   Soon, every farmer will be at this stage (as seen above), though it still seems such a long way off with these snowflakes that insist on hanging around. Non-the-less, the ground is beginning to thaw, nothing can stop the inevitability of the seed coming to fruition..

Farmer Spotlight: Batula Ismail

Farmer Spotlight:

Batula Ismail

"I love being part of the Community"

When I asked Batula what was her favorite part of her farming business, she said: “First, the community, I love being part of the community.” She loves working with the public, making exchanges, and having a role in the local economy. Batula came to Maine in August of 2005 and was one of the earliest farmers to join the New American Sustainable Agriculture Project. She was one of three women who started farming together in Lisbon, and are today at the core of the program, often acting as role models for new farmers that are just starting out. Although Batula had a lot of experience with farming before coming to the states, she notes that farming practices are very different, and often more challenging and involved here than in Somalia. The main difference, she notes, is the steps we take here to plant a seed. “In Africa, you put the seed into the ground. Here you plant it first in the greenhouse, and you have to label every tray you use, so that you know where and how to plant things.” She has to familiarize herself with different types and varieties because “at the market, customers ask me what types of vegetables I have, so I have to learn them, then use compost and plant it outside. Because of the labeling I can learn how to test the vegetables, try out recipes and learn how to cook them.”

Batula’s children help out on the farm, and she thinks it is important to learn, as“farming is the future”. Of course they have a choice for work, since they have been partially or fully educated in an English speaking school system, but “this work is   important, I am learning what I am growing, I taste the difference in my food and what is being grown in the supermarkets.” Because of the climate change, and the expectations of her customers, some of Batula’s food traditions have changed since coming here. Eggplant, broccoli, arugula, and Brussels sprouts are vegetables that she has not only welcomed onto her field, but also onto her table. Welcoming the new vegetables means also saying goodbye to some crops she remains nostalgic about. She found one of them in a Somali store, that is like corn but larger, but it did not taste like home.

Batula dreams of her own farm and land, where she can keep all her children and grandchildren safe and nourished. In addition to vegetables, she would also have animals, since “in our country we used to raise animals, to eat and to help with the process of farming”. When I asked for any last words, Batula wanted to say “thank you to the CSA customers, and all those people who live in the state who support small local farms” It’s a good system, difficult sometimes but a good system to be a part of.

HOW IS OUR CSA DIFFERENT?

       It is time to sign up for our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Program! There are so many ways to make this a convenient, healthy and fun part of your existing lifestyle routine. Since we offer half and full season, family and single size, office delivery and discounted rates for lower-income costumers, there is really no excuse to not become a CSA member.

        Knowing that you are signing up to receive fresh, in-season, local quality produce each week is enough to make it 100% worthwhile to become a member of our CSA program. Incorporating the Fresh Start Farms produce into your summer, fall and sometimes winter diet means that you are doing a great service to your own health, as well as the heath of those you feed and the earth you live on. This alone is enough to know that you are contributing positively to environmental and health solutions for our planet. 

HOWEVER....

When you sign up with Fresh Start Farms and Cultivating Community, you are doing 

SO MUCH MORE.

The Fresh Start Farms farmers are some of the most socially disadvantaged farmers in the country. This means that they are producing beautiful and healthy produce in abundance despite the challenges of language, literacy, and transportation to name a few. Establishing a connection with the Fresh Start Farms growers is a wonderful way to learn about the diverse communities in Maine, and to teach children, friends and teachers about the intersections of social, environmental and personal health.

Please get in touch with us if you would like us to come and present about our program at your office or school.

ESL Classes

I had a moment today to snap a few pictures...

of our bi-weekly ESL (English as a Second Language) and literacy class that is part of the Fresh Start Farms farmer-training program. In this class, we focus on basic literacy and oral competency for the farmers, zeroing in on skills needed to run a successful farming business, but also opening up the classroom space to create a foundation of literacy and English that will allow for future educational, vocational and social opportunities for these students in their new communities. 

              Working the land is more often than not, a common language, though without basic conversational skills, and without numerical competency, the refugee and immigrant farmers that arrive in Maine and other states, are often at a disadvantage when it comes to securing economic stability, and accessing basic rights to protection and social security. 

             We structure the curriculum in order to confront certain challenges of maintaing a small business as a pre-literate adult. Our culture here in the states, and especially in the marketing world (even for small farmers), is 100% reliant and dependent on text and literacy. Everything from writing vegetable names and prices at the farmers market, to reading and writing checks and ordering seeds, is based on textual models that can be bewildering to someone who not only comes from another language, but comes from a culture based on a system of meaning that is not rooted in print. We work with dialogue and vocabulary, using skits, movements and grids, in order to attach the memories with more tangible lessons. Learning to hold a pencil correctly, and learning to read a grid from left to right and up and down have turned out to be valuable lessons.

• Here we are learning vegetables by their first letter. Solidifying this is key to being able to write the whole vegetable name from memory. 

I broke the semester down into five seperate learning blocks:

1.  Vegetables We Grow (with the intention of gaining oral competency in 34 vegetables and literacy in 20 vegetables by the end)
2. At the Market ( using farmers market scenarios to learn important dialogue and quick change making)
3. On the Farm (learning the vocabulary of production...compost, row, bed, shovel, irrigation etc.)
4. Record Keeping (ordering seeds, reading checks, writing invoices for wholesale and CSAs, tracking all sales using accurately written numbers, grids and math!)
5. Ongoing Lessons (weather, writing the date, filling out forms...)

We always try to make the lessons as close to real life as possible, in order to make the work personal, applicable, memorable and of course...fun. "Making it Real: Teaching Pre-Literate Adult Refugee Students" is one of the most relevant sources on the topic: Tacoma Community house

• We learn the names of the months by talking about the cycles of the growing season...
• We learn basic counting through adding coins and dollars while simulating farmers market exchanges...
• We learn how to ask, answer and clarify questions through role play and go fish (with veggies) games...
• We learn basic functions on the calculator by adding, subtracting and multiplying vegetables at market.
• We often learn about each other as we ask questions and get in return, often compelling stories in English about exactly how to grow a tomato plant from seed, the differences in the growing culture between Somalia and Maine, and some of the trials and tribulations that still stir in their memories about their home countries.