Faces behind the food

Community Supported Agriculture puts consumers in touch with producers

The seed catalogs are yet unread and the cold frame is empty. I guess I am finally resigned to the fact that we will be without a vegetable garden this summer. Except for the asparagus that, bless its heart, keeps coming back no matter what, gardening takes a degree of attention and care that we just can't give it right now. It's time to let the soil rest in any case. Too many years of not enough crop rotation have left our beds virus-ridden and buggy. 

But still, my gardener's feet itch to walk down orderly planted rows to see what's poking up through the dirt and my cook's imagination misses the challenge of dealing with whatever abundance the garden gives me.
  
Listening to me moan about this (yet again) at dinner one evening, a friend handed me a pamphlet for Sun Circle Farm, a small farm in Paoli that practices Community Supported Agriculture (CSA for short).

And what the dickens is that, I wondered? It turns out that CSAs are arrangements between farmers and consumers where people pay a lump sum of money to the farmers before the start of the growing season and in return farmers provide them with freshly harvested produce weekly from spring through fall. 

They aim to make local agriculture a viable enterprise, a reasonable alternative to the very unreasonable fact that most of our food travels an average of 1,300 miles from field to dinner plate. 

With CSAs, everyone wins. Members get their food at competitive prices, keep their money in the community and support small local farms. They also have the opportunity to be part of the growing process — to have input on the crops that are planted and to walk those rows of growing plants. The farmers in turn have their production expenses guaranteed, eliminate waste and don't have to spend valuable time marketing their produce. If they are lucky they may even gain a few eager souls to help transplant seedlings or harvest the beans.

It's true that if there's a drought or the locusts come, the weekly boxes might suffer. But farming is always a risky business, and we all share those risks anyway, ether through paying higher food prices or paying taxes to subsidize colossal agribusiness. CSAs let us share in the enterprise of feeding ourselves in more soul-satisfying and community-building ways. 

The CSA idea originally came to the US from Europe via Japan, where a group of women, fighting to stave off growing food imports and save local farms, came up with a strategy called teikei, translated as "putting the farmers' face on food." 

I was smitten with the whole idea, and ready to sign on. I sent a check off to Sun Circle Farm and made arrangements to meet the faces who would be on my food this summer. 

On a soft green April morning, redbuds washing the woods with pale purple, we headed to Paoli, where the farm is bounded by Hoosier National Forest land. We parked among the horse trailers at Youngs Creek Horse Camp and trekked down a long gravel road. 

Just past a huge horse barn, the three acre farm stretched out before us, full of the hopeful starts of baby plants, mulched hills of potatoes, and grassy bunches of garlic. Fragrant young fruit trees bordered the sun-warmed fields. The sweet, earthy smell was enough to make you want to throw yourself down on the grass and roll around in a frenzy of spring joy. 

I got a grip on my middle-aged self just before that happened, and went to meet the farmers.

Anthony Blondin (below moving an herb its winter home in the greenhouse) and Meredith Jabis (above tending vegetables in a fields at Sun Circle Farm while two of their four farm dogs romp in the foreground) now do all the farm work themselves, though they will have two IU interns this summer. They are young and tan and lean, with the narrowed eyes of people who spend their lives in the sun. 
 

Friends since their college days at the University of Michigan, the two joined forces to work Sun Circle Farm a few years ago. The farming they do is organic and phenologic, focused on the life cycles of plants and animals rather than the dates on a calendar. Peas at Sun Circle Farm are planted not on March 17 but when the maple trees bud, and corn when acorns reach the size of squirrel ears.

Quaint as that sounds, this farming is ceaseless, backbreaking work. When I ask Anthony if running the farm is fun, he snorts with grim humor, as if he doesn't quite recognize the word in this context. But a moment later he says with deep conviction that he wouldn't do it otherwise. 

It's surely not for the money-- they earned roughly a dollar an hour for their labor last year. They live simply, in rustic cabins near the fields, taking their meals and their showers at the home of the friends who own the farm, a ten minute walk away. 

What drives them both is their deep commitment to helping people connect with where their food is coming from. Meredith remembers wistfully the Ann Arbor CSA she worked at, where members got actively involved in the process – visiting the farm, having picnics and holding festivals. 

Because Bloomington is an hour away from Paoli, fewer members here have made the trip. At one open house last year nobody showed up at all, a disappointment still alive in Anthony's voice. They are hopeful that that will change this summer as they expand the number of memberships they can sustain from 15 to 40. 

As we talk, we stroll around the farm. The seedlings--heirloom tomatoes, squash, broccoli, and peppers--are already started and thriving in the greenhouse. In the fields, purple asparagus, beets, peas, strawberries, and other crops are looking strong and vigorous. The Sun Circle Farm dogs -- Sadie, Lucy, Mason and Jake — have kept the deer at bay this year and the plants are bursting with energy and health. 

When it is time to leave, I am filled with appreciation for the hard work these folks have done, and overflowing with contentment and anticipation. Just like in my own garden, I am curiously in tune with rhythms beyond my control, and at the same time, burning with the desire to hurry things along. I can't wait, but I will. That first garden box is not far away.

Sun Circle Farms still has some 2003 memberships available. A half share (feeding 2 adults) costs $400 for the season, coming to just over $16.50 per week. Boxes can be picked up in Bloomington on either Tuesdays or Saturdays. For more information, call Anthony or Meredith at 812-723-2430.