Community Supported Agriculture

Well, we've officially embarked on our first CSA (community supported agriculture). For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, a CSA is a system where you pay a monthly fee to a local farmer and then get a "share" of the products of the farm. This is most often a weekly box of vegetables, but in our case, it's a monthly distribution of various meats.

Why do this? Here are our reasons:

• We are getting grass-fed and -finished meat (meaning no feedlots or antibiotics or grain-fed animals), which is nourished by natural means and has better nutrition in the meat itself.
• We are trying to limit the meat in our diet to a reasonable amount, and "rationing" our partions over the month will help that.
• We are directly supporting local farmers rather than national meat processing companies. We like the idea of being able to shake the hand that feeds us.
• We are supporting ethical treatment of animals, rather than using meat that comes from feedlots and animal "factories" that abuse their animals to increase profit margins.
• Later in the year, we may likely volunteer an afternoon to help on our CSA farm, in order to help our daughters understand where food comes from.

So what did we get? A chicken (whole), some pork chops, a pork shoulder roast, a big rack of lamb, some Italian sausage, beef stew meat, and a nice beef roast. Several of these cuts will span multiple meals. It's probably less meat than we have eaten in a month up until now, but see Bullet Point #2, above.

We're going to try it for a few months and see how it goes.