Andrew Coppolino looks at the pros and cons of community-shared agriculture

Community-shared agriculture programs, known as CSAs, are increasingly popular in Waterloo Region, and while the majority of customers sign up during the winter, there are still spots available for a short time this spring.

But is buying a membership for delivery of a box of fresh produce for 16 weeks or more of the summer the right choice for your family?

It's a question that Green Hart Farms CSA farmer Kendra Danner says needs to be asked, so much so that she posted a series of questions and a quiz on her website.

"It's just to help people with CSAs in general, not just ours. Every farm CSA is different, so I wanted to help people decide if it is right for them. CSAs can be a very good fit for some people, but not for everyone," Danner says.

A CSA membership is essentially buying "futures" in fresh, local produce: buy your share in the winter or early spring and take delivery on the beans, kale, broccoli, tomatoes and corn when they are harvested later in the year.

The money upfront gives farmers the resources to work the farm and plan their relatively short season in southwestern Ontario.

With her mother Linda Danner, Kendra started offering CSAs through their New Hamburg farm about six years ago.  

"We're hoping for around 200 CSA memberships this year," she says.

Green Hart works just over an acre for vegetables and offers a spring-summer CSA program, from May to September, and a fall CSA program, from September to November. They deliver to Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo, New Hamburg, Baden and Stratford.

Experimenting with different vegetables

CSAs offer different sized boxes depending on your vegetable wants and needs. Programs usually run from mid-June to mid-October and often into November for late-season produce.

There are also different periods of delivery and pick-up, which could be weekly or bi-weekly depending on the CSA. With limited space in their fields, CSAs cap their programs at a number they can serve throughout the summer and into fall.

At St. Agatha's Fertile Ground, owner and lead farmer Angie Koch says there are many advantages to joining a CSA if you are committed to eating a lot of greens and perhaps being willing to experiment with vegetables like kohlrabi, a brassica that is also known as German turnip.

"CSAs give full transparency to the relationship with the farmer and confidence that the food is grown at a nearby farm," she says. "But you may have to be flexible in your tastes and willing to eat new and different vegetables."

CSAs usually grow most of the vegetables they sell, but may draw on other local producers, like-minded in their approach to farming, when supplementing their food baskets over the course of the season.

Aside from giving you the ability to support fair wages for farm workers and helping build a healthy food economy, one of the greatest advantages of a CSA, said Koch, is motivating kids to eat healthy, nutritious foods and expose them to a "diversity of truly local vegetables" just about year-round.

"I hear the stories frequently that families who bring their young children to the farm to pick up vegetable boxes get them to eat better. At supper, the kids ask, 'Are these farmer Angie's carrots?'" she says.

That, of course, is aspirational for families, so Danner at Green Hart says it's important to "really get to know yourself" before signing up.

"A lot of people join saying they're going to eat all these vegetables all summer long. It's like going to the gym January 1 and saying you're going to be so fit. But by March, you're not going," she says.

The tips the Danners offer are useful: will your family eat vegetables outside of things like carrots and potatoes? Do you have enough recipe ideas to take care of the bounty of kale that might be coming your way and that it won't go to waste before the next delivery?

"If your CSA is pickup, do you have time to drive to pick it up each week? Then, do you have time for meal prep?" Danner asks. "Even if you're just making salads, it's going to take some time compared to eating out."

At New Leaf Market Garden in Waterloo, Jeremy MacDonald asks a very simple question to anyone thinking of joining a CSA.

"Will you be around during the summer or are you planning on taking a lot of vacations? I think the CSA works well for people who are around for the majority of the summer," he says.

Calling it a "diversified farm," MacDonald says New Leaf produces a wide variety of about 40 vegetables during the summer. He says the business is a 50-50 split of selling produce at the Elmira and St. Jacobs farmers' markets and through CSAs for pick up, either at the farm or in downtown Kitchener.

"My experience has been that it doesn't work as well if you're a traveller," MacDonald says adding that different CSAs offer different flexibility in their policies.

"For example, some CSAs will donate boxes to community services if people can't collect them," he says.

The advantages in joining a CSA are many, including directly supporting local agriculture and helping you make positive changes to your eating habits, says Kendra Danner, but only when you are  honest with yourself about your family's food preferences and available time.

"Some people join us because they are committing to eating more vegetables, and they are being realistic about it."