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Community farm programs produce offbeat veggies

By Michael Hill
Associated Press

DELMAR, N.Y. -- Dewey heads of lettuce are being delivered to shareholders of community supported farms this summer, along with fresh tomatoes for sauces, squash for sautéing and mizuna for ... ummm, what's that for?

Such is the quandary of community supported agriculture programs: The weekly deliveries of food received by members is dependent on harvests. They can be heavy on corn one week, kohlrabi the next.

With community supported farms becoming increasingly popular, more people face the creative challenges of serving up non-mainstream vegetables like bok choi, or less popular ones like okra.

"It's fun. From week to week, you never know what you're going to get," said Marcy O'Hare, as she picked up a delivery in this Albany suburb.

Lined up on a table in a church kitchen were cardboard boxes of lettuce, Swiss chard, squash, tomatoes, cabbage, garlic, cucumbers and beets. A marker board instructs shareholders how much of each item they can take.

O'Hare belongs to a community supported program operated by Fox Creek Farm, which offers 20 weekly deliveries starting in June for $440 a share ($22 per week).

O'Hare likes the fresh, healthy food and supporting local business. Farmers get guaranteed prices for their crops and can sell directly to consumers.

The beneficial arrangements are sprouting up across the nation as the related buy-local and eat-healthy trends pick up steam. The buy-local Web site LocalHarvest lists more than 1,500 community supported farms nationwide.

There are some trade-offs, however. Bumper crops bring overflowing delivery baskets, while bad harvests mean smaller deliveries. Farmers plant a multitude of crops, in part to mitigate that risk.

But in any given year, such farms tie shareholders to the natural rhythms of local agriculture. In the Northeast, members might get peaches in July, corn in August, late-season spinach in September and pumpkins in October.

Fox Creek member Shana Lewis likes the fact that unusual bounties force her to try new food. She would never have gone to the supermarket to buy kohlrabi, but when she received it, she made up a delicious kohlrabi salad with onions and carrots.

Still, there are limits. Lewis said the last such farm she belonged to she got lots and lots of turnips: "I mean mad amounts of turnips," she said.

For offbeat offerings, community supported farms like Fox Creek include recipes in their newsletters. Other farms post recipes online.

Debbie Palmer, the community coordinator for Live Earth Farm south of San Jose, Calif., has collected close to 2,000 recipes online in the past decade. It's searchable by ingredient, from apples to zucchini.

"I think there's kind of an infinite supply out there," she said.

Take mizuna, for example. Leanne Abe of San Diego asked on the CHOW Web site what she should do with the leafy green vegetable after receiving a delivery.

She received suggestions to stir-fry it, slip it in a panini and sear it with sesame oil but eventuallly opted to sauté the mizuna with bacon and shallots.

"It tasted pretty good," she said. "Mizuna is a pretty bitter green, you can't really hide it.

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Take a look

Peter Meixner, of Delmar, N.Y., picks up his weekly share of vegetables, including chard, left, and lettuce, center, from Fox Creek Farm, a community-supported agriculture program in Delmar Tuesday, July 24, 2007. As CSA programs become increasingly popular, shareholders face the creative challenge of serving up non-mainstream vegetables. (AP Photo/Tim Roske)

A shareholder shows one week's share of squash from Fox Creek Farm, a community-supported agriculture program in Delmar, N.Y., Tuesday, July 24, 2007. As CSA programs become increasingly popular, shareholders face the creative challenge of serving up non-mainstream vegetables. (AP Photo/Tim Roske)

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