North Star Orchard

CSA Member Elizabeth S. enjoyed playing with her food in 2010!
Here’s a short film of all the amazing creations she made with her weekly Veggie and Fruit CSA share.
Awesome!!

By now, many many people know what CSA stands for, but in case you’ve missed it, it is “Community Supported Agriculture”.

And now, for a bit of history:

Its roots reach back more than 30 years to Japan where a group of women concerned about the increase in food imports and the corresponding decrease in the farming population initiated a direct growing and purchasing relationship between their group and local farms. This arrangement, called “teikei” in Japanese, translates to “putting the farmers’ face on food.” The concept traveled to Europe and America, where it was given the name “Community Supported Agriculture” at Indian Line Farm, Massachusetts in 1985.

In this country, the differences between CSAs are as vast as the number of CSAs. While they are primarily vegetable-based, many offer fruits as well. Meat, cheese, and even grain/flour CSAs are in existence. Most CSAs have members sign up early, sometimes even the fall prior, while others have various payment plans, or account-balance-based structures. Some CSAs have hefty work requirements of members, while others do not have any. The list of differences goes on.

What CSAs all have in common, though, is a significant connection between farmers and consumers.

I argue, however, that perhaps we should be making a shift to calling them ASCs instead; Agriculture Supported Communities. With all the buzz about ‘local’ and ‘sustainable’, shouldn’t we be looking at ASC as a model?

There’s something that seems not-quite-right when some CSAs are delivering veggies all over Philadelphia, and pushing 60 to 100 miles from their home base to do it. There are farmers who are traveling 3 hours and more to sell at Philadelphia and New York City farmers’ markets. Please note I am not dissing these operations, just making a point. Personally, it seems somehow not-quite-right for me to be schlepping Fruit Shares to Horsham and Kutztown, each of which are 40 miles distant, or going to a farmers’ market 60 miles away. It’s not that I don’t want those folks to get my fruit – not in the slightest – but now that ‘local’ and ‘CSA’ and ‘sustainable’ are gaining such momentum, I think we must watch out for how to encourage things to ‘travel’ in the right direction.

It wouldn’t make sense, after all, if a Lancaster-based CSA were delivering shares to Philly, while an urban or suburban Philly farm couldn’t sell all the shares it had available to sell. And although there are no other local Fruit Shares like ours available in the area at this time, if one did pop up near Kutztown but had to deliver shares to our own Chester County area, we’d be passing each other on delivery day. Sounds goofy, huh? But that’s just what has happened as commodity agriculture grew. As a nation, we are exporting apples TO China, and importing apples FROM China. Where’s the sense in that? Same thing goes for all kinds of other crops and businesses.

So, what we need to be on the lookout for, and work towards, is making sure that things make sense. Work towards ASC: If you’re joining a CSA, choose one close to home. And then, as years pass, make sure it’s STILL the closest one to home. While I’d hate to say goodbye to long-term members of ours who live at somewhat of a distance, I would enjoy saying ‘hello’ to new members who live in our own county. While I’d be sad to leave some far-flung farmers’ markets that I’ve gone to for years, I’d be happy to supply my direct neighbors with food, knowing at the same time that other new farms are supplying the people I used to. Of course, new orchards are far and few between, as the development costs, in both time and expense, are so friggin’ high. But, new farms will come along if we all, as a community, can show that there is the need and desire for them.

In days gone by, we all practiced ASC. Little hamlets and small towns relied on their own neighborhood farmers to feed them. We are living in an environment so gosh-darned suited to agriculture that there is no reason why we cannot again practice ASC. But, of course, many people are still unaware of the concept of buying local, or may be unwilling to practice it. They may think it too expensive or inconvenient. But such feelings and attitudes are changing; we’ve been watching it happen.

Community as a word has come to represent just about any group: Facebook friends, online gaming groups, etc. Community as a locale would be a great thing to bring back as its major definition. Imagine knowing personally your shoemaker, cheesemaker, electrical engineer, jelly maker, and farmer – because you lived near them, worked with them, and supported each other in business. I think we may be headed that way. ASC is one of the first steps.

ASC would really be teikei. But, we’d love to see things go further than that. Let’s really see the consumers’ faces, as well as the doctors’, the mailmans’, and yes, even the garbage collectors’. It takes all of us to build community.

For a great example, watch this video about what a small town in Vermont has done! (Grab your coffee, this one is about 20 minutes long, but worth it!)

There’s a word farmers use to describe the more unusual, rarefied varieties we get a kick out of growing: esoteric. The assumption is that such varieties are appreciated only by other plant geeks and hard core foodies (a word which has an unfortunately negative connotation in my mind – what’s wrong with caring about your food?). The cultivation of such esoteric varieties implies an impractical search for flavor, for the forbidden fruit, the holy grail of the garden.

I’ve always liked the word ‘esoteric,’ and could easily picture what it meant, in farming terms, but I wasn’t quite clear on its precise definition. So I looked it up:

Esoteric adj. a) intended for or understood by only a chosen few, as an inner group of disciples or initiates (said of ideas, literature, etc.) b) beyond the understanding or knowledge of most people; abstruse

(abstruse?!?… “abstruse adj. hard to understand; deep; recondite”… recondite?!?… “recondite adj. Beyond the grasp of the ordinary mind or understanding; profound; abstruse”)

This definition isn’t quite what I was expecting, but it leaves me with the dissatisfaction I was predicting it would. I say it’s not fair that the pursuit of really good flavor is limited to the chosen few. Shouldn’t we all enjoy our food? There is the conundrum that something cool inevitably loses its cachet once it’s gone mainstream, but I think that’s where the local food movement can step in. If small farms were well-supported enough so that the farmers had a bit more breathing room (with their time and finances) and could play a little, they could discover and cultivate all the unusual things that were well-suited to their microclimate. And differences in climate and ecosystem as well as appropriate scale would set natural limits to the spread of certain varieties and foods. So each farmers’ market, CSA, or local food store would have its own unique varieties (say, didn’t that used to be the case, once upon a time, but not so long ago?) We can all be in the inner circle – in our own foodshed.

This sounds like a great scenario to me. It’s a goal of many farmers I know (a few of us at North Star included) to grow things they truly enjoy growing (and eating!). There is, however, often a sort of tug of war between productivity and livelihood on the one hand and passion and creativity on the other. We can all relate to this, right? The need to make a living often leads us to do things that we don’t love to do, even if we’re not compromising our morals by doing them. Planting anything is a gamble, and the first rule of intelligent farming is to have a ready market for what you’re planting. Whether or not those new oddball crops will sell is anybody’s guess. The fruit CSA ameliorates this situation a bit, by providing an infrastructure in which we (the farmers) can grow unusual varieties and have a ready market for them, and you (the consumers) can try new and amazing things without going on a wild goose chase to find them. Just by signing up, suddenly, you’re in that inner circle, and the esoteric is becoming a bit more recognizable.

First-timers walking up to our market stand or checking out the list of varieties that North Star grows won’t see many familiar faces. No Red Delicious, no McIntosh, no Granny Smith…. I think there’s one Fuji tree out there somewhere, and a number of HoneyCrisps for the enthusiasts. But Hudson’s Golden Gem? Esopus Spitzenburg? Adams Pearmain? A season or two, and these are old friends. And you CSA members get first crack, because the small amounts of the unusual varieties go right into the fruit shares.

“But what’s with the wacky names?” you might ask. Many are heirloom varieties, others are new varieties bred for disease resistance, some are North Star originals, some just needed naming – they might be a “numbered variety” (still being tested and not yet or not ever named and released for commercial distribution) or they might be a “mystery variety” that was shipped incorrectly by the nursery. Some of these varieties received the death sentence of “commercially unviable.” But viability looks a little different when you’re growing on only 15 acres, handling fruit by hand, and sending apples to market days after harvest. It also helps to have informed customers who appreciate a variety of flavors throughout the season. It might be humanly impossible to grow all of the hundreds of varieties possible in our southeastern Pennsylvania region, but with the inner circle on board, we can certainly try!

(Submitted by CSA Member Beth M.)

They have captured the sun of high summer,
All reds and golds and sticky warmth.
And their fragrance stirs a blood memory
Of things I’ve never learned but always knew.
The knowledge of my mother, and her mother,
And generations before,
Who had to save the sun of summer for winter’s stingy light.

As the sweet aroma fills the room, they come to me–
These woman who share my blood
And my need to hold back the dark.
I feel their presence — their hands guide mine,
I see my eyes in their eyes, feel their hearts in my chest.
Their hands know these tasks and their touch is true and sure.
I abandon myself to the memory of this work that I was born knowing.
I am cradled in the arms of this unending line of women
As we work together to preserve the sun.

When the days shorten they will come again,
Because I have preserved their memory,
Along with these peaches,
To nourish myself in winter.

Most CSAs in this area offer vegetables, but there are also a few which offer meat, eggs, cheese, and fruit. I’ve even heard of a grain CSA, although that’s nowhere near us.

In the midst of CSA signups this spring, I received an email from a member stating that he’d like the “I Can Control Mother Nature” Share. Well, that statement gave me the chuckle I’m sure it was intended to give.

But what a concept, eh? The “I Can Control Mother Nature” Share would see us all getting exactly what we wanted when we wanted it. No worries about spring frosts, hail, or droughts. No concerns at all about biennial bearing issues. Taken to the extreme, it could mean getting Asian pears or heirloom tomatoes all year long….wow!

In many ways, that sounds like a mighty good idea. I can conceive of gorging myself on gage-type plums, nectarines, and Gold Rush apples day after day, year-in and year-out. For veggies, it would mean Swiss chard daily. I’m as addicted to each of those as I am to coffee.

My coffee addiction I can feed every day, usually with the same brand, although I do try new ones from time to time; they’re always Fair Trade certified and/or locally roasted. I’m currently SO into One Village Coffee, which I purchase at the Upper Merion Farmers’ Market, that I’m trying to figure the best way to source it over winter when market is done. I look forward to those two (or three) cups a day (morning and mid-afternoon) not only to feed my caffeine addiction, but as a comfort-food type of thing.

It’s kind of the same feeling I get when I eat some of those favorite fruits of mine, or eating my ‘green of the day’ (either kale, Swiss chard, arugula, mustard greens, or spinach). To me, they not only taste good, but they act as comfort foods to my soul. (Hey, better having mustard greens than Twinkies as a comfort food!)

But while the “I Can Control Mother Nature” Share sounds mighty appealing, I think I would tire of it. Part of the delight of eating locally-grown foods is the variety and the somewhat limited supply. It’s the surprise you get when the nectarine you just bit into is so gosh-darned sweet, juicy, and flavorful it hurts your brain….only to find out that the next one you bite into is even (impossibly!) better. It’s the first bite of a Hosui Asian pear of the year, when you realize that you absolutely forgot just how freakin’ good they are, because it’s been 10 months since you last had one. It’s digging into a plate of Swiss Chard that is so flavorful and addictive you’d swear the plant had been injected with MSG.

Sure, it would be great to be able to eat all of your favorites all of the time. But the ‘wow’ moments would wane. You wouldn’t experience that anticipation of waiting for the start of November because you know that’s when the Gold Rush apples would be coming on. Summer might not seem quite so fantastic if you could eat heirloom tomatoes and local sweet corn all year long. While I look forward to my routine two (or three!) cups of coffee a day, they don’t give me that sense of anticipation and sheer joy that eating seasonal food does.

As a farmer, I would certainly enjoy the “I Can Control Mother Nature” concept in many ways (the ability to turn off hail or hot weather would be a blessing). But as an eater, I’d like to keep things just the way they are!

What is it about fruit? It’s so much more alluring than vegetables, and apparently it’s been that way for a very long time. There is a fervor about North Star fruit that is just not there about the vegetables (except, perhaps, the tomatoes, which are, after all, a fruit). There is a wild-eyed excitement about the first plums, the first peaches; the first CSA share might contain for true converts the first tree fruits they’ve had since that last Gold Rush apples disappeared from the fridge sometime mid-winter.

These fruits are raised in the finest gardens, just picked from their local sites. There are sweet-sweet-luscious, full-spouting-fragrant, aromatic-and-perfumed, red fresh-peeled-and-juicy round-eyed lichees from Fuzhou. And from Lanqi District there are sour-sour-tart, shady-shady-cool, soft-limp-green, nurtured-to-the-full, springtime cymbidia with the leaves still on. From Songyang District are supple-supple-soft, quite-quite-white, frost-frozen persimmon cakes soaked in honey and covered with sugar powder. From Wuzhou Prefecture comes juicy-juicy-tender, glitter-glitter-bright dragon-twined jujube balls kneaded in sugar…
– from the Chinese drama Pai-hua t’ing, circa 1250, translation by Stephen H. West

This attraction must be in our blood. We’ve evolved to seek out fruit. In his exploration of human appetite, Michael Pollan explains the draw toward sugar: “Like most other warm-blooded creatures, humans have inherited a preference for energy-dense foods, a preference reflected in the sweet tooth shared by most mammals. Natural selection predisposed us to the taste of sugar and fat (its texture as well as taste) because sugars and fats offer the most energy (which is what a calorie is) per bite.” (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, p. 106) And when that sugar is in its natural form as a “whole food” such as a piece of fruit, it’s delivered in its own package of fiber. It’s good for us – our body knows how to process it. It’s the artificial and concentrated forms of sugar (like sodas) that don’t exist in nature that give us trouble. Yet they’re tempting for the same reason that a good peach is so irresistible; our brain is hard-wired for sugar. We know very well that the deep-fried oreos on the boardwalk are a bad idea, but they’re just so good…

But there’s more to this scenario in which we’re drawn towards fruit. Someone told me recently that our sense of smell inhabits a portion of our brain “older” than that of language. In other words, our sense of smell evolved before our capacity for words. Which explains why we sometimes feel such deep and instantaneous associations of smell and memory. Since smell and taste are so closely related, perhaps the same is true for our experiences with food? Why is it that as an adult, we hold onto cravings instilled in us in childhood, both for foods like tomatoes from our grandmother’s garden and for really absurd foods like Tastykakes?

But it’s also a visual thing. When all the various fruit varieties are spread out at market, the display almost overloads the brain circuitry. Something primeval kicks in, and for a moment, all you can see is that fruit. Last week, I heard someone say “oh my god!” as they rounded the corner and stopped in their tracks, confronted suddenly with two levels deep of radiant Red Haven peaches and EasternGlo nectarines. That kind of abundance is rare and fleeting in nature, and if you’re hunting and gathering your food, you had better stop and take notice. The colors in particular catch our attention; reds, oranges, and yellows are cues of ripeness, of a transformation of carbohydrates from an undigestible form to a digestible one. (Prof. Stanley Ulijaszek, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford University, ‘What’s the natural human diet?‘ 22 January 2010)

At market, on more than one occasion, I’ve seen children, too young yet to use words, burst into tears at the sight of our fruit, up on the market table and out of reach of their stroller. From experience (or from evolution?), they know they want that Asian pear, and they can’t have it fast enough. Their parents really have no choice but to quickly buy a small pear and hand it over. (Perhaps another form of evolution at work?)

So, if this is your first season of the fruit CSA, get ready. Because once you’ve tasted really good fruit, there’s no turning back. It’ll ruin you on supermarket varieties. Since you’ve joined the CSA, you’re probably already disillusioned with the standard offerings of fruit, so it’s no surprise to you that the peaches are picked way too early and the apples are stored in special holding facilities for up to an entire year. People are so surprised when they taste fresh, ripe fruit, sadly because it’s often a flavor that they haven’t experienced ever, or at least for years. I had literally not eaten a good plum until I was twenty-six years old, and it was a revelation. Juicy, tropical, layers of complex flavors unfolding in my mouth… Those ‘aha’ moments can convert you into loving new foods and introduce you to a whole new world of flavors. Treating yourself to all this fruit for the next twelve or fifteen weeks may appear to be purely an act of pleasure, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the taste factor of the CSA is actually more important than that. After years of delving more and more deeply into the realm of farm-fresh foods, my tastes have literally changed. What I perceive as “food” has changed as well. I really do notice a difference between foods that are fresh, alive, and tell a story about place, and lifeless and lackluster foods that traveled to me via tractor trailer and conveyor belt.

If you have children, you’ve probably already tried to convince them of this: you can train your taste buds. It’s important that we know what a summer apple tastes like versus a fall apple. It’s important that each one of us has our favorite plum variety of the season. In agriculture as in natural ecosystems, biodiversity equals health. If our taste buds are conditioned for a narrow range of foods, then we’ve been conditioned to support monocultures and industrial agriculture. If the only tastes we can distinguish are a Granny Smith apple from a Red Delicious, then our palate is supporting mega-orchards of just a few varieties bred for standardization, storage, and shipping. But if we can appreciate a Pristine apple in July and a Gold Rush in November, knowing that if we were to travel to Vermont or to North Carolina that different varieties would be on the menu, then our palate is paving the way for a more sustainable and biodiverse agriculture.

As Wendell Berry has famously written, “…eating is an agricultural act. Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth. Most eaters, however, are no longer aware that this is true. They think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps, but they do not think of themselves as participants in agriculture. They think of themselves as ‘consumers.’ If they think beyond that, they recognize that they are passive consumers. … Eaters… must understand that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.” Luckily for us, eating from a more sustainable system tastes good. Good enough in some cases to elicit poetry, or at least some fanciful prose. After all, I’m willing to bet that those “sweet-sweet-luscious” thirteenth century Chinese fruits were picked on some pretty healthy farms.

We all have to make tough decisions from time to time.  Today, we’re witnessing the result of our decision to cut down three large Norway maple trees in the yard. It’s a difficult thing to watch, and it’ll take some time getting used to them being gone. And the timing of this event with Earth Day/Week couldn’t be more at odds. How can I justify our actions?  How can I say goodbye to the trees?

Justification is fairly easy, if I think with my head rather than my heart.  One of the trees has been slowly dying since it was hit by lightning several years ago.  And the other two?  Well, they just make it extraordinarily difficult to see traffic when pulling out of our driveway – so it’s a safety concern – especially when we have CSA members and farm helpers coming and going. Of course, when those trees were first planted, this road wasn’t nearly so busy.  But having a relatively new Walmart and Home Depot up the road brings not only a bunch of trucks but a bunch of shoppers by everyday.

But, it’s still hard to say goodbye to trees.

I can also justify our decision with the fact that since we bought this property, we planted more than 1400 new fruit trees.  Trees which are even now blooming and will soon be loaded with wonderful fruit. I can justify our decision with the fact that we’ve taken a 10-acre piece of monocropped, worn-out cornfield soil and in a few short years have transformed it into a healthy and productive small farm.  I can justify our decision with the fact that we will plant new trees around the house (likely sugar maples), but this time they’ll be placed in better strategic locations.

But, it’s still hard to say goodbye to trees.

And where will they end up?  Well, the larger wood will go to farm helper Josh’s house, where he’ll use it next winter to heat his house.  The smaller branches will be chipped and used as mulch around our fruit trees, providing them some protection from weed competition.

But, it’s still hard to say goodbye to trees.

How can I say goodbye to these trees?

I guess I’ve done so right here. Thanks for listening.

“This brings me to a theory I have about the growth of farmers’ markets. The conventional explanation is that people are rediscovering local food. That’s certainly true. But I think people are as hungry for the community experience as they are for the fresh broccoli. Several years ago, a group of sociologists from the University of California-Davis followed people around as they shopped in a supermarket. They found that your chances of having a conversation with another shopper are about 1 in 10. They then tracked people at farmers’ markets and found that your odds of having a conversation in this setting are nearly 70 percent. It’s this social pleasure that I think is driving the very modest, but noteworthy, regeneration of local businesses in some communities.” – Stacy Mitchell in Yes! Magazine

I just read this quote the other day and did a mental cheer.  It’s such a true statement, now. It certainly didn’t used to be this way.

Sixteen years ago, we and a small group of Chester County farmers started the West Chester Growers’ Market.  It was somewhat of a grand experiment, really, as there were literally NO producer-only markets of the kind in the area.  None.  So, the experiment was: will the farmers come? Will consumers come? Will this be a success?

Having worked at a farm in New York in the late ’80s, I was familiar with the successful Greenmarkets of New York City, but in Pennsylvania there existed no such thing, so we were really breaking new ground.

And here we are, 16 years later, with producer-only markets popping up in towns and cities all over the place.  And….new small farms are popping up all over the place. It took awhile for the concept to catch on, though. I remember the early years when we farmers at the West Chester Growers’ Market had plenty of time to chat with each other during market time. And the buzzwords of ‘organic’, ‘local’, ‘sustainable’, and ‘grass fed’ were not in general use.

My, have times changed! People are indeed hungry for not only good food, but connections with other people and the farmers who grow their food. CSAs and farmers’ markets provide good food and great community connections; to the point where some people can’t imagine life without them.  Great changes, indeed.

Now’s the time of year when farmers’ markets and CSAs are getting started for the year – and we are so looking forward to seeing our good friends again after a long winter.

If you or someone you know is in need of help finding some local markets or a CSA this year, please look at Local Harvest.  Simply by plugging in your zip code, you’ll get a list of all the markets, farms, and CSAs in your area. Tell your friends about the markets/farms/CSAs you love. Tweet and Facebook about them. Get the word out. You’ll love the connections as well as the food!