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Written by Erin Frustaci
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Wednesday, 12 July 2006 |
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Page 1 of 4
 When breakfast is skipped, lunch is handed to you through your car window and dinner is delivered to your doorstep in 30 minutes or less, do you really know where your food comes from anymore?
Community supported farms throughout northern Colorado make an effort to curb people’s disconnection from their food.
Community supported agriculture, or CSA, is a direct partnership between the farmers and the consumers. Though there are variations among farms, the basic premise is this: Members pay an annual fee to help cover the operating costs of the farm, and in return they receive a share of the harvest.
 Addy Elliot, 31, of Fort Collins has been a member of Happy Heart Farm in Fort Collins for two years. She is a soil scientist at Colorado State University and became involved with Happy Heart through a friend.
“It’s exciting to know where my food is coming from and to be a part of the process,” Elliot said.
She, like several members of CSA farms, has a working share. She volunteers three hours a week on the farm and pays a discounted rate to take home some of the bounty.
“Once you are connected to the food system, it’s hard to go to the grocery store,” she said.
Members come to the farm once a week to collect their fruits and vegetables. Depending on how a farm measures, one share can feed between two and four people.
Amy Benton, 37, of Fort Collins said her family splits a share with another family.
“We eat organic food anyway, and I thought it would be neat to support a local farm,” Benton said.
Happy Heart Farm, the first CSA farm in Colorado, strives to not only provide quality food, but to also build community.
Bailey and Dennis Stenson started the three acre farm in 1989 and have 100 shares this year. Shares that feed two people cost $350 per season, and members can get $150 off for helping with the work. The season runs for 20 weeks starting in June.
Dennis Stenson was born in Greeley. He loves the soil of his homeland and he loves bringing life to that soil.
“Our farm is community supporting, not only community supported. It goes both ways,” he said.
Many CSA farms pride themselves on having certified organic produce or using a bio dynamic farming system. Bio dynamic systems require special preparations and sprays made from herbs, mineral substances and animal manures in a highly diluted solution. The focus is on the farmer’s relationship with the local ecosystem.
“The awareness of organic food has really heightened since we first started,” Bailey Stenson said. “It’s healthier food because it is getting picked fresh and ripe, not when it is still green. It doesn’t need to be shipped. Each item shipped travels, on average, 15,000 miles. The environmental impact is huge.”
Compared to farmers markets, the benefit of a CSA is that the crops are pre-sold, though several CSA farms also participate in farmers markets or donate extra crops to food banks.
 David Lynch, one of the founders of Guidestone Farm in Loveland, said many CSA farms focus on education.
“We try to enforce regionalism,” he said. “Our goal is to educate the consumer to eat locally.”
Guidestone Farm has a vegetable program as well as a raw milk program. In addition to offering shares, Guidestone Farm also has a farm store on site which shelves a variety of products including eggs and meat. The store is open to the public from 4-7 p.m. Fridays and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays.
Still, not everyone runs out to join a CSA farm. By paying upfront, a person takes the same risk as the farmer. Bad weather could wipe out the harvest or damage certain crops.
 Shannon Obering of Fort Collins said he gets most of his produce from grocery stores because of the convenience, but does buy organic items when he can.
Sean Okland, produce department manager of Safeway, 460 S. College Ave. in Fort Collins, said this time of year his store gets a lot of produce from area farmers.
Little labels that read “Colorado Proud” distinguish which foods are grown around here.
“The price goes down when we don’t have to ship things from Mexico,” he said. “Quality wise, I wouldn’t say one is necessarily better.”
Okland did say that produce from farmers markets and CSA farms is sometimes a little fresher, but can also be more expensive because they don’t run specials or offer club-card savings like grocery stores.
Still, Susan Wright of Loveland says the benefits of CSA farms outweigh the drawbacks. Wright helps out at the Cresset Community Farm in Loveland and said the CSA movement is catching on.
“People need to look at things from a different perspective,” she said. “We tend to expect cheap food that looks perfect that we can get year round. We need to adjust to eating seasonally and cooking with what we have. Not everything is picture perfect.”
And not everything can be served through a drive-through.
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