Enterprise Farm Winter Farmshare

Some people eat to live, while others live to eat. I fall into the latter camp. Food is a passion and consuming locally is my goal. At Middlebury College, fresh, local food was plentiful and was readily available at dining halls, included as part of my meal plan. My boyfriend, who worked at the local co-op grocery store, would often bring back produce that was cosmetically imperfect but incredibly delicious. When I volunteered at the college's organic garden, I was able to bring home some of the bounty. It was easy to be a sustainable consumer when it required no effort and little cost.

Consuming local food proved to be more difficult when I moved back to Boston after graduating. I had no extra money to spare on things such as organic arugula or heirloom tomatoes. As summer rolled around, I started an internship and many of my colleagues signed up for a CSA share that was delivered to our office. As I drooled over the fresh, local produce that flooded in every Wednesday, I regretted not being able to eat like I used to at college. When my supervisor went on vacation for three weeks and graciously let the interns divide her share, I was in heaven. My roommates and I expanded our palates as we figured out how to incorporate rutabagas and radishes into our diets, since up until then we had mainly consumed pasta, rice, and beans. I was determined to sign up for a farm share as soon as I could afford to.

In August, my full time job started and for the first time ever I had a steady stream of income. And, as it turned out, a lot of spare time to catch up on my local food reading. As I pored over The Food Project's blog and the Boston Localvores blog the idea of a Winter CSA piqued my interest. I discovered that most of the farm share sign-ups were in September and October and since it was late November, I was glad to be able to put my name on a couple waiting lists.

When I got the email from Enterprise Farm letting me know that I could sign up late and they would pro-rate our share, I was thrilled. Up until now, my boyfriend and I have spent about $150 dollars a month on groceries. Signing up for a farm share was an expensive commitment, about $30 a week for 10 lbs. of organic produce. We were also uneasy about the fact that not all that was included in the share would be exactly local. The share would also include items from our "regional foodshed" (i.e. Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas). Rationalizing that this option would still be better than buying food from who-knows-where at Bazaar or Super 88, we decided it would be worth a shot, and, at the very least, good karma to practice what we preach in terms of eating sustainably and locally.

I have wanted to write about food for a while; chronicling my first foray into eating locally in Boston with my farm share seemed like a great opportunity to start.