What is CSA? It’s food that you buy directly from the farmer, not the grocery store. It’s local farms providing consumers with fresh seasonal produce. It’s Community Supported Agriculture.

Meet some food enthusiasts and CSA farmers below the fold.Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a food service that provides locally grown produce on a weekly basis for subscribers. CSA farms and their consumers had the opportunity to meet at a CSA Fair in Iowa City organized by Local Foods Connection (LFC).

Local Foods Connection is a nonprofit group serving low-income families. LFC director Laura Dowd expects her group to aid 40 families with CSA food subscriptions.

LFC gives subscribers farm tours, healthy cooking classes and opportunities to volunteer at the CSA farms. The idea is that the link between the family and the farmer makes a connection in a way that only good food can.

Farmer Mark Armstrong sold out his CSA crop already; those still interested can be added to a waiting list. He works the Acoustic Farm in Springville, Iowa, and is starting his second year of CSA farming. Acoustic just added more than 40 acres, and Armstrong processes chickens, hogs and deer for his family. He talks about the process in this video:

This year Armstrong wants to add honeybees to Acoustic Farm’s herd of animals.

Located just a few miles south of the Iowa-Minnesota border, Grass Run Farm has 150 acres of grazing pasture. It sells feeder cows, veal calves, chickens and pigs. Owners Ryan and Kristine Jepsen will ship their meat anywhere, but they agreed on the importance of selling locally.

Grass Run Farm supplies Iowa City’s Devotay restaurant, where food guru Kurt Michael Friese has his base of operations.


Above: Friese tries to convert another “Slow Food” eater.

Maury Sass (pronounced “sauce”) has a family farm and country market in Riverside, Iowa. The Sass Family Farm has a chemical-free approach, but don’t call it “organic.” Sass said organic certification “is a license to charge more … my produce is as good or better than organic.”

Last year Sass delivered weekly packages of food to his 55 CSA subscribers, but said he couldn’t do that this year. He is asking subscribers to pick up their CSA packages of food at his farm.

Sass Family Farm holds an annual pumpkin fest in the fall with a kid-friendly Haunted Barn, petting zoo and Straw Maze.

LFC volunteer Jonathan Kohls works in a deli slicing meat and cheese during the day, but by night he’s a food activist.

He discusses some of the politics of food in this video:

Kohls (he told me his name means cabbage in German) wants to start his own farm someday with goats, watermelon and maybe even some hops for brewing his own beer. He didn’t say anything about growing any cabbage, however.

Another LFC volunteer, Monika Ratner, discussed the financial benefit to CSA farmers who take a risk with each seed planted. The up-front money of CSA subscriptions is taken at the beginning of the season and helps cover any crop blights.

Ratner said she can’t wait to start working outside growing food this summer.

The fair included seven Iowa farms (see below). Edible Iowa River Valley and the New Pioneer Co-op cosponsored the event.

The CSA farms at Saturday’s fair:

Acoustic Farms of Springville,
Oakhill Acres of Atalissa,
Sass Family Farm in Riverside,
the Grass Run Farm in Dorchester,
Scattergood Friends School Farm and Prairie in West Branch,
Simone’s Plain and Simple of Wellman,
and ZJ Farm/Local Harvest CSA of Solon.