tammyjoymccrea

Free Run vs. Free Range vs. Conventional egg production:

Free-run: hens live in barns and can roam about inside the barn

Free-range: hens live in barns but have access to the outdoors, weather permitting.

Conventional cage: hens live in groups of five or six. This is the most common type and represents about 98% of Canadian egg production.

via Canadian Egg Marketing Agency

Books by Indra Devi, yogi

Five Easy Ways to Go Organic, @ The New York Times

Environmental Working Group: Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce

Resource Guide for Organic Insect and Disease Management, via Cornell University.  Material Fact Sheets for organic pesticides.

Community: it implies sharing, having something in common. One thing we all share is the need for sustenance. Small, typically family run, often transitional or organic, CSA farms provide your community directly with seasonal produce.

How it works. The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model involves a mutually beneficial relationship between community members and local farmers.  Consumers purchase a share from the farm at the beginning of the season and in return receive weekly delivery or pick up of seasonal produce. Consumers benefit by increased support of the local economy, accessibility to fresh food, and a greater connection to where their food comes from. Advantages to the farmer are support for small, intensive family farming practices, less focus on marketing and thus more focus on creating a high quality product, and a shared financial risk.

Carrots, beets, and broccoli - oh my!  Unlike a grocery subscription service, you are not ordering known quantities of specific foods. Instead, you receive a portion of the crop that has come to maturity that week.  This may be young salad greens, peas, and radishes in springtime, and potatoes, squash, and broccoli later in the growing season. Depending on where you live, you may receive anywhere from 18 to 20 weeks worth of produce May through October.

Origins. Community Supported Agriculture is not a new concept. A community farming initiative rumoured to have been influenced in North America by the rise of similar agricultural models in Japan and Chile in the 1970s, it is more likely that the movement emerged “organically” and virtually simultaneously with the establishment of two North American CSA farms. According to Steven Mcfadden in “Community Farms in the 21st Century: Poised for Another Wave of Growth?”

The ideas that informed the first two American CSAs were articulated in the 1920s by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), and then actively cultivated in post- WW II Europe in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The ideas crossed the Atlantic and came to life in a new form, CSA, simultaneously but independently in 1986 at both Indian Line Farm in Massachusetts and Temple-Wilton Community Farm in New Hampshire.

How to get involved.  Purchase a share.  Visit the Robin Van En Center for updated listings of CSA farms in the United States and internationally.

UPDATE: I happen to know there is a new CSA coming to Langley (BC, CANADA) - Nathan Creek Organic Farm.  They have recently leased 40 acres from The Land Conservancy on which to establish the farm. They are currently accepting applications for shares. Download the application from their site. C'mon - do it!