Tuv Ha'Aretz CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture)
How do you come together and share a resource?
In 2009, members from Kavana and Jconnect launched Seattle’s first two Tuv Ha’Aretz CSAs. (Tuv Ha’Aretz is Hebrew for “Good from the Land”.) CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, a co-operative arrangement between consumers and farmers for buying a season’s worth of produce from a local farm. The resource we share is the Oxbow Farm, a local organic farm. In the broader sense, we share and help preserve the local farming asset by guaranteeing local farmers a market for their crops. In 2009 our CSAs purchased more than $30,000 worth of local and sustainable farm produce.
Our CSA farmers, in turn, benefited our Tuv Ha’Aretz communities. Their weekly deliveries during the 2009 season gave us a regular meeting time around produce pickups to build friendships and host community events, from talent shows to cookouts. We enjoyed a direct relationship with our local farmers and we were invited out to the farm for tours and crop gleanings. And, of course, our farmers gave us fresh, nutritious food which went to our member families and to a local food bank. When you see an urban 4-yr old gleefully eating string beans, and knowing where they came from, you know you’re doing something good.
How would your group use the award money?
Seattle’s Tuv Ha’aretz 2009 CSA season was somewhat of a limited trial by Jewish groups founded on principles of inclusiveness with many interfaith members. The founding group Kavana and 2010 participant Kol Haneshama each share sanctuary and office space with Seattle churches. In 2010 we plan to open up our CSAs to members of these church communities and also to neighborhood residents. We will do this completely in a spirit of respect for all participants.
We will use any award to help us further the community goals of our CSA programs. Specific 2010 goals include adding a sustainable and local meat component to our CSAs and developing an educational curriculum around community and sustainable food practices. Broader goals towards which award money would be directed are to put purchasing power behind local sustainable agriculture, make local produce more affordable and accessible to all of our community including those relying on food banks, promote food systems that are healthy and sustainable for workers and consumers, and make local farmers once again members of our community. We will do this by buying more farm produce, donating more to local food banks, programming community events with our farmers, and celebrating local food.
Ilana Mantell
This is a brilliant idea! A great way to bring different communities together, work toward a more sustainable environment, and have a lot of fun.
This is the future!
Steve Cohen
Wow!!!
Deb Arnold
This truly is community supporting agriculture and agriculture supporting community. What could be more cooperative than that? It’s win-win-win-win-win and wonderful.
Jeff Sprung
This program had a direct and powewrful impact on our family — including our 8- and 6-year olds. We gained a great appreciation of the importance of local and organic food in staying healthy ourselves and keeping the planet healthy. What a great way to celebrate community!
Debbie Levin
I am a member of Kol HaNeshamah. I am looking forward to being able to participate in the CSA in 2010. The cooperative spirit the CSA promotes is wonderful. My children (4 and 8 year olds) would love to meet the farmers that grow our food.
Helene Russ
I’ve had a CSA subscription before, but having a community in my neighborhood, people I share values and tastes with(ahem)to collectively have a subscription seems unique. I loved being able to trade recipes and ideas about the food. Pickup time was a party about sustainability in which we really practiced community.
Kate Koester
I was excited to participate in the Kavana Cooperative’s CSA this past year in order to give my son (18 mo) the opportunity to have a connection to a local farm. I didn’t expect the amazing community that developed from CSA pot lucks and hanging out at the pick up site. This was amazing. A wonderful project!
Avigail
WOW did you guys put together an amazing program in Seattle. It is fun to see how each Hazon CSA across the country can be so different and still hang on to the same values of connecting people to sustainability and health within a Jewish framework.
Karey
My husband and I have been members of CSAs in three cities — Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Winston-Salem; but our experience of being part of the OxBow Farm CSA in Seattle in conjunction with Kavana has been by far and away the most fulfilling membership we have experienced. We not only felt connected to an amazing local farm but we were connected to a Jewish community committed to bringing the ideals and values of CSA to its own conversation about Judaism, food, and agriculture. An amazing program.
David
Sure looks tasty!
Leigh Ann Johnson
Beautifully done! This video truly captures the sense of community and connection with our food that resulted from this project. Thank you!
Jenn and Joel Magalnick
I’ve visited and toured Oxbow Farm and learned about the efforts they’re doing to sustainably harvest the land. I’ve also been at the receiving end of the CSA, with boxes from both Oxbow and Full Circle Farm. The produce is fresh, makes us have to be creative so we’re not cooking the same ol’ mac and cheese, and beats the stuff that travels across the country on a truck.
— From an SMCU member family
Paul
From the root to the fruit!!! This YouTube video is not only spunky and sure to delight — it is nothing short of organic, fairly-traded, shareware genius, which could only be wrought from a hypothalamus fueled by 100% community-based, sustainable, food practices, policies, and procedures; possessed by a magnanimous soul dedicated to the healing arts of wholesomeness and purity, leavening and natural sweetener, temperance, moderation, and global bonhomie. Elegant work, Dave!!
Larisa Wanserski
It doesn’t get much better than this — food, community, people coming togethter to support local farmers, learning and fun! What a terrific project and absolutely lovely video.
Rita
Enjoyed the video and I can’t wait to go back to Seattle to enjoy some of those fruits and vegies.
Tammy
Yummmm! I can’t wait!
ari
what a great idea – kol haneshanah is awesome and only more wonderful and adherent to their values of community, repairing the world.
ari
what a great idea – kol haneshanah is awesome and only more wonderful and adherent to their values of community, repairing the world and respect by their CSA endeavor.
cinda stenger
This is fabulous! I can’t wait to get my nails dirty with my neighbors kol haneshanah- thank you!!!
joe mitter
Way cool; hats off to our friends at Kol Haneshamah and a special shout out to Stephanie. Looking forward to supporting this endeavor.
Sharon
It is so easy, in our urban lives to lose touch with the “roots of our food”. Thanks for heightening our awareness of our bounty.
Stephanie
I’m looking forward to participating in the CSA. The more I work on this the more excited I get.
Sharon/Savta
What a wonderful example of interfaith work and community cooperating. Best of all, everyone learns, benefits and grows. Mazel tov to all of you!
David Schor
Thanks for posting the nice comments above. Many thanks, also, to the friends who provided pictures, and to Stephanie Sahanow for her creativity and very many hours on the video. -Dave
Steve Weil
Very inspiring!
David
What a phenomenally tasty project!
Marilyn Mathews
The voting site….It’s not working!! Not adding additional hits and now not even refreshing! Help!!!
Barbara
What a wonderful project
elie
You are very inspiring.
Adam
A fantastic project bringing together several different communities, young and old alike. A model for building community, and creating a more sustainable world. Best of luck.
Michelle Ein
As a participant in this CSA, I value the connection between our farmers and subscriber families. That connection fuels the creation of healthy communities, in a really delicious way. This is a model of sustainability that is worth sharing with others!
Jane
THis program has been so powerful in creating community in our small community it is exciting to envision expansion to include other communites working together to play in the dirt and teach out children about farms and where their food comes from and who grows it as well as harvesting food for those you don’t always have enough. Let’s share this with others!
Sara
As a participant in both the Kol Haneshama and J-Connect communities, I can say that they do incredible work!! I would love to become a CSA member to support the work that I have dedicated years towards; environment, food security, community, education.