Today is Monday, January 21. Already(?/!). This is a small piece of great big news because today marks the first day of the 2013 Winter CSA season! We're baaaaack! Our Leola location is again alive with the hub bub of CSA harvest and delivery. Warehouse packing staff are jamming to various soundtracks as usual (Star Wars and The Last of the Mohicans to name a few), lunch smells waft up to our second floor CSA office from the break room below, and the interruptive garage door slowly opens and rushes closed as our drivers deliver organic goodness from our farmers for Tuesday pick up locations tomorrow. Despite the sky looking like the underside of a comforter and being the color of a recycled egg carton, today is a good day. Tomorrow and the days after will be even better. Go for organic veggies--even in the winter!

Photo Credit: CSA Files

If you take a gander at the full vegetable share box--overflowing with marvelous produce grown in certified organic dirt--you'll see that, 1. yes, this is a representative share of the Spring-Summer season, and 2. this is also representative of the glory of the CSA experience. Or, shall we say, C-S-Yay! While we are busy mourning the vacancy our veggie shares have left during the fall-to-winter break, we quickly brainstormed some of our favorite (CSA) things, or why having an LFFC CSA share is the best. Please read carefully:
1. With a CSA share, one no longer has to hunt for and miserly gather good produce. Instead, rest assured, the produce one receives weekly from a share, is in fact the best tasting and most nutrient-dense.
2. Experiencing the seasonality of our community's hardiness zone on a foodie level by eating what is currently growing and being harvested.
3. Making only what you have ingredients for is a luxury.
4. Minimal grocery store trips. Need I type more? I think maybe I do: no more (or significantly fewer, or only choice-based trips that include the following) florescent lights, squeaky-wheeled carts that turn like a 1948 Mercury Tudor, mile-high aisles of processed foods packed with preservatives, additives, and low-quality, nutrient-empty ingredients proclaiming to be "natural" or "from nature." Granted, this could be true if that actually means a factory, assembly line, or clean lab.
5. Up front payment. Once and done. Or, if you'd rather--a workable payment plan. Easy budgeting.
6. When we participate in any given CSA season, buying a share--whether it be full, half, fruit, flower, cheese, egg, meat, pork-free, milk--helps to support a number of small, family-owned, certified organic farms in our area--Lancaster and Chester counties. Without CSA support, maintaining family-ownership of these farms is liable to become increasingly difficult with rising costs of farming and threats of agribusiness.
7. When we participate in any given CSA season, buying any CSA share is growing local and regional positivity and awareness for the environment and ecosystem.
8. With our CSA, organic is affordable.
9. Saying, "no," to big box shopping--at least for food stuffs which is enough to inspire changes in other purchasing as well.
10. LFFC CSA means learning more about vegetables that grow in our community--beyond sweet corn, potatoes, and tomatoes--and this is always exciting!
11. Participating in our CSA program produces contagions of forward-moving, open thinking and a more mindful existence.

Photo Credit: CSA Files 

Despite the drippy, droppy, rain-dreary January weather, the CSA office is heating up! We are moving, shaking, and getting ready for the Winter season to begin next week! If you haven't yet signed up, please do! We are only accepting applications for our full, 12-week season through January 17th. Thereafter, the season will be prorated. More organic goodies means more organic goodness! Check out the photos of our renown sauerkraut at our member farm, Oak View Acres, prior to labeling. Oak View Acres also bottles our delicious Bowman Mountain applesauce. Yum! These are just a couple of items that will be included in the Pantry add-on share.

Photo Credit: CSA Files

Dearest CSA enthusiast, supporter, researcher, voyeur, critic, lover, shareholder, [enter role here],

Welcome! Hello! We hope you were and are well and will be from now on, too! Come one, come all to the new location of Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative's CSA blog! I am happy to introduce you to it/us. Here, you will find tidbits about us as a coop, as a CSA program, as a local food supplier, as food and agricultural theorists, as your shareholder support group, as CSA participants ourselves, as local food and organic learners, and even little (maybe not-so-little?) bits of our personalities.We wanted to create this space to reach out to you with our best words forward. Please do feel free to respond and engage in the discourse. We love to hear from you and want to! Please also feel free to reach out to us to let us know what you'd like to see here!

Photo credit: JDHansen