This week I finshed the first month of work in Boston. I haven't explained much about the work ahead of me for the next year, but now that I know more about it I'll explain. My job here involves helping the Presbyterian Church in Burlington, MA with their food missions and the Boston Faith and Justice Network in their daily routine. The church is always collecting food for the local food pantry, and regularly volunteers at a local soup kitchen, but also has a unique food outreach as a pick up site for the Farmer Dave's CSA customers. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculutre, it is the idea that the community members or customers purchase shares of the farm harvest at the beginning of the season, and pick up their weekly share of the food throughout the season as it arrives. Every Monday, the Farmer Dave's truck delivers food freshly picked that morning already portioned out in boxes for the CSA members. Farmer Dave's is a large farm that has 19 different locations for people to pick up their CSA shares of which the Church in Burlington is one. Every Monday I help the Burlington Church member volunteers unload the food and get it ready for the members to pick up. I am getting to know the members and assisting them with any questions or confusion they have.
It's a pretty well run operation because the farmer is guaranteed to have people take the food, and the customers can pick up fresh produce for the week in one location. My fellow YAV housemates and I actually purchased a fruit share and a vegetable share for the rest of the summer. Since we've committed to eat only local food until January, the CSA helps us find local food in one location. I've also enjoyed learning to cook with these fresh ingredients. My favorite was making pumpkin bread from a real pumpkin, and not a can of pumpkin. It just felt good to be able to do that. I would encourage you readers to look into CSA farms in your area and consider purchasing a membership either this fall, winter, or next year for some of the best produce in your area. The Church benefits from this CSA as an opportunity to use their space to meet a need of the community. We church volunteers will be working with the members who pick up food to see how we might expand the selection of groceries available at their pick up. And to seek out ways to expand the outreach to the community as a church.
This type of work in a church environment will be a very interesting way for me to understand a bridge between a faith community and the local food movement. If any of you readers have thoughts on how purchasing local food relates to God's mission please post them in the comments section or send me an E-mail, as this is a topic I am exploring for the year.
On a side note about CSA's, I was an intern with the CSA at Nu-Beginning Farm in Greenville, VA in the Shenandoah valley until May 2013. CSA farming is a relatively new term and concept in the agricultural world, especially in the Shenandoah Valley (my homeland)--a place where those letters used to stand for Confederate States of America and these letters are found on Civil War history memorabilia at the many battlefield museums. As all things relate to food, I am talking about Virginia, a historically abundant agricultural region also known as the "Breadbasket of the Confederacy" providing over half of the food (especially grains) to the southern soldiers during the Civil War. And almost all of the civil war battles in that part of Virginia were fought on farmland, pastures and crop fields along the valley. Much could be said about that war and the C.S.A. forming as a way of farmers deciding for themselves the way they'd grow food and what they'd grow (not how or what the government mandated), but now CSA's like Farmer Dave's and NuBeginning put that power of control over your food closer to you with that relationship. Get to know your farmers! A CSA is a great way to do that.
When I'm not helping the church with this, the other half of my job is with the Boston Faith and Justice Network (BFJN). One of my activities with Ryan at BFJN is writing on their blog. I'll explain more about my work there on a later post on this site, but as a preview until next time, you can read my blog posts on the BFJN tumblr page.
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