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Article published Jan 1, 2008

Winter isn't fallow for vegetable farms

Root storage, greenhouses keep crops growing

By Rebecca Lerner

The Ithaca Journal

Every other Wednesday in the winter, Trumansburg farmers Evangeline Sarat and Paul Martin set out to meet the people who eat their food. "Everything we grow is for them," said Sarat, co-owner of Sweet Land Farm. "We really believe in the idea of a community supporting a farm."

Sweet Land Farm is a CSA (community-supported agriculture), a kind of agricultural business model that connects organic growers directly with consumers.

By cutting out the middlemen, distributors, truckers and grocers, CSAs bring in more money for farmers, who often struggle to earn a living wage. Most small farms had negative profit margins in 2004, the last year data was available, according to a report this year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And because members buy shares before the growing season begins, farmers have income available when they need it most, to purchase seeds and soil mixes, advertise and work on building projects.

In general, a CSA operates like this: Customers purchase shares in a farm's harvest in advance, then come to designated pick-up points on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to pick up a pre-determined variety of produce that shifts as the season progresses.

On a recent mid-week afternoon, Sarat and Martin spread boxes of fresh kale, potatoes and other produce on the tables at Main Street's Hazelnut Kitchen, a Village of Trumansburg eatery where they distribute their food. The CSA's 64 wintertime members trickled in over a four-hour stretch, taking time to swap recipes and trade updates about their lives.

"A couple generations back, everyone had a garden or bought from the local grocer. It's really different these days. Most food in the supermarket, you have no idea where it came from, you're never going to visit that farm in California," Sarat said.

Buying locally grown food is a way of life for many in Tompkins County, as the popularity of the GreenStar Cooperative and the Ithaca Farmers' Market can attest. CSAs, too, have become increasingly prolific. A search on the Web site LocalHarvest.org showed 17 area CSA farms.

Most CSAs, however, operate in the summer. Sweet Land Farm in Trumansburg and Blue Heron Farm in Lodi are the only two in the area offering winter shares.

Sweet Land Farm is solely a CSA, both in the winter and the summer. Sweet Land began its operations after Sarat and Martin bought the property on the winter solstice of 2006.

Blue Heron Farm, run by Robin Ostfeld and Lou Johns, sells produce at the Ithaca Farmers Market, GreenStar Cooperative Market and to four restaurants. In 1997, Blue Heron also became a wintertime CSA, though it does not have a summer CSA program. This year, Blue Heron has upward of 120 members, each of whom pays $150, and a long waiting list.

"We find it gratifying on many levels," Ostfeld said. "Educating people about what it takes to grow and store food really helps to bridge the gap between passively consuming and actively choosing how to spend food dollars."

Many of Blue Heron's CSA customers are motivated by concern over global warming, Ostfeld said: "They want to do their part to eliminate long-distance trucking of produce from California to the Northeast in the winter."

Local-food advocate Tycho Dan, a produce manager at GreenStar Cooperative Market, called CSAs "pioneers" in sustainability.

"Even at GreenStar, which is the most local grocery store, we get 25 percent of our apples from New Zealand in a given year," Dan said. "It is absurd, in the opinion of a person who studies these things, how much energy and pollution comes from what we do. It's really mind-boggling."

"But the challenge of the CSA model is that the consumer has to adjust to eating only produce that is in season," Sarat said.

Sweet Land's June 7 distribution offered chard, parsley, cucumbers, basil, peas and broccoli. The Aug. 17 one had cantaloupes, onions, sweet peppers, summer squash, edamame and cucumbers. A recent wintertime distribution had potatoes, kale, carrots, beets, parsnips, cabbage, leeks, rutabagas and salad mix.

Wintertime distributions generally contain less variety than summertime distributions because they include root vegetables that the farms have stored in humid cellars, in addition to freshly harvested produce. Kale grows outside unprotected in the winter because it can survive freezing temperatures, but other items, such as lettuce varieties, are grown inside a greenhouse in tunnels covered by poly-blend fabric.