Support a farm

It's called Community Supported Agriculture, CSA, and it's been happening around the world for quite a while.

It's become more popular in the United States in recent years, and that trend is starting to spike here in southeastern Connecticut.

The concept is pretty simple. A farm elects to commit its crops to a collection of members who pay in advance for a season of what are usually weekly distributions of whatever is coming out of the fields.

For the farmers, it establishes a reliable source of income, and members share in the vagaries of the growing season, the ups and downs of crop yield. Members buy in, risks and benefits combined.

For the members, it's usually a cheaper and more reliable supply of fresh vegetables than you might find even at farmers markets.

It is also a chance to quite literally invest in a farm as a paying member, meet the farmers and see exactly where your food comes from. And you get an assortment of fresh vegetables that you might not otherwise choose on your own.

"I've had people tell me they've never felt better after eating from the farm for a couple of months," said Rob "Digga" Schacht, who with his wife, Teresa, runs Hunts Brook Farm in Waterford.

Hunts Brook is one of the older CSAs in the region, now approaching its fifth season, and the number of shares has been growing steadily, from 10 the first year to 55 last season. They will probably cap it at 75.

Kerry Taylor, who with her husband, Max, have taken over a CSA at Woodbridge Farm in Salem, renaming it Provider Farm, told me she sometimes sees members in CSA share rooms, where the food is distributed weekly, exchanging recipes and encouraging each other to try different foods.

"People really appreciate the diversity," she said. "It improves their diets."

Max Taylor said they are striving to make their CSA, probably the region's largest, with 11 acres dedicated to growing vegetables, both affordable and essential to its members.

"We don't want to be a luxury," he said. "Instead of being the first thing cut out of (someone's budget) we want to be the first thing they have to have."

Salem will also have another new CSA farm this season.

Two young couples are selling shares in their Frim Fram Farm (frimframfarm@gmail.com) at the Teel Farm, which was actually a CSA farm many years ago, long before the current trend began.

"There is a history here of the land being used for a CSA," said Matthew Stevens, one of the four young farmers at Frim Fram, which also offers one of the most affordable share prices, $300 a season for two to three people.

Another CSA opportunity is offered by Fresh New London, a nonprofit supported by a consortium of community and education organizations. The Fresh New London shares are made available weekly at the Fiddleheads Food Co-op in New London.

I paid a visit last week to the Taylors' Provider Farm, where plans are under way for the imminent start of the spring planting season.

Both the Taylors went to college in western Massachusetts and both worked for CSA farms in that area. The system is much more common there, and Kerry Taylor worked for a large farm with 500 shares.

The Taylors, like so many young people new to farming and enamored of the CSA concept, struck me as incredibly hard working and creative and strongly motivated by the idea of feeding people well.

The Taylors and all the other CSA famers I spoke with told me they don't feel that they are competing with each other. Indeed, they all had good things to say about one another.

"It speaks pretty loudly to me," Max Taylor said about his interest in farming, something I might have expected any of the others to say, too.

"I've never thought about doing anything else."

The onions will go in the ground next week at the greenhouse at Frim Fram Farm.

It's time.

Support a farm. Buy a share in this summer's bounty. They may not last.

This is the opinion of David Collins