A couple years ago, I saw The Real Dirt on Farmer John at SIFF and absolutely loved it; the farmer in question has a great story to tell that, among other things, shows how one of the first American CSAs got started (according to Wikipedia, the farm is now one of the largest CSAs in the country). Some of the history is sad and upsetting in a small-town-judgment sort of way, and hearing what John had to say about being a farmer who fits in best with a very urban community was fascinating. It's also chock full of old Super 8 footage, and I'm kind of a sucker for home movies. I have met very few farmers who look comfortable in a feather boa, but John wears his with flair. This week--I'm not sure for how long--it's playing at the Uptown on Queen Anne and it's well worth seeing. Last I checked, it's not yet available on DVD, at least via NetFlix.
I have a tough time with the CSA model--if you don't recognize the abbreviation, it boils down to one of those things where you get a box of vegetables every week, which means that you get to complain all winter about how much you hate kale and spend July forcing summer squash on your friends. As a household of two humans, with a job that entails more restaurant dining some weeks than I could wish, a box of produce slanted towards Average Family of Four is a horrifying waste. Some farms now have two-person boxes, and some allow you to substitute things you won't use (kale) for things you will use (salad mix); these days, some programs run under the heading CSA bring in produce from other states, or trade with other producers to add items like cheese, honey, milk or nuts to the basic produce box, so they're more like Pioneer Organics ("organic home delivery") than Community-Supported Agriculture.
The great thing about a real CSA is that it brings a steady income to farms year-round; signing on before official growing season means they're not having to borrow on summer harvest earnings to live on the rest of the year. (King County folks, find a CSA right over here.) I prefer the farmers market: I like basing what I want to eat on what looks and tastes best during a specific week, and if I get a craving for, say, tiny green beans, then I don't want to feel an obligation about the build-up of good produce that will result if I go out and by a pile of tiny green beans that weren't delivered in my weekly box. It doesn't feel all that great to choose my mouth over my favorite farmers' monthly budgets, but we all have our lines in the sand where we start fighting back against consumer guilt.
This was a great week at Broadway Farmers Market: I got a pile of Riland apricots for jam tomorrow, and a bag of perfect peaches that I pureed and froze to make batidos with later. That coveted pile of tiny green beans is going to be turned into a big salad with herb vinaigrette and feta cheese for dinner tomorrow (with focaccia from the Gypsy Bakery), and we've been munching on carrots so sweet they taste like candy (how much beta carotene can you have before your skin turns orange?). The biggest hit was sweet corn from Willie Greens; I haven't managed to bring good sweet corn home for about four years, and this stuff was spectacular, in part because it wasn't one of the weird super-sweet varieties that taste like the corn equivalent of Nutrasweet. The kitten chased corn husks around all afternoon, and both cats attempted to use their pointy carnivore teeth to gnaw on corncobs--it's even funnier than feeding them peanut butter.
