Support Local Farms Without Leaving Town (2 of 2)

Editor's note: This is part 2 of Collingswood Patch blogger Allie Burger's look at buying local. Read part 1 at 

There are several CSA boxed-share programs and buying clubs available in the immediate Collingswood area. Many of these programs are complementary. Plus, new vendors join the Collingswood Farmers’ Market every season.

It’s awesome to have so many options for purchasing local and sustainable foods. With a minimal time investment, you can find local, sustainable food products that fit your tastes and lifestyle.

If you have any suggestions to add to these lists, feel free to add them in the comments below. I look forward to your feedback!

CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Boxed Shares
The basic premise behind a CSA is that consumers invest in a farm prior to its growing season. You write a check in the winter and then receive produce on a weekly basis from May to November.

A CSA member commits to buying a weekly share of a farm’s produce—for better or worse. The concept originated as a way to spread out the seasonal risks of farming throughout the community as a way to make small-scale, sustainable farming more economically viable. The CSA concept is now being applied to other types of farming, and it is possible to buy dairy, meat, seafood, or even egg shares

Member involvement varies by CSA. Some visit their farms on a weekly basis, harvesting their own crops and/or working on the farm, while others receive a weekly delivery of a box of fresh produce. A CSA that offers boxed shares tends to be large and well-established, so chances are the box will be filled on a weekly basis as anticipated.

Honey Brook Organic Farm
Honey Brook delivers boxed shares of organic and transitional organic produce to Healthworks Market every Wednesday. The contents of the box vary from week to week, and are chosen for CSA members based on what is harvested that week.

Honey Brook also offers CSA members the opportunity to travel to its Chesterfield, NJ location to pick their own crops. Last year, that site reached capacity, and it is quickly filling slots for its second growing season.

Total cost for the season, which lasts about 24 weeks, is $660. Payment plans are available, and two families can choose to split a full share. Details are available on the farm website.

Greensgrow Farm
Greensgrow offers a weekly boxed share with five to eight vegetables, two types of fruit, a cheese choice, and an additional dairy or protein item. During select weeks, the share includes an extra item, like bread, apple cider, fresh pasta, honey, or microbrew beer.

The group principally distributes produce from local farms, but also grows a handful of items on its own urban farm. Shares are available weekly at the Camden Cooper Grant/Rutgers Campus on Thursdays from 3 to 7 pm or at the Camden Center for Environmental Transformation from 4 to 7 pm.

A full share costs $775 for 24 week; 13-week half shares may be purchased for $435. Payment is accepted in installments or with a credit card. For more information, visit the Greensgrow website.

Green Pasture Farms CSA
Green Pasture Farms brings a farmers’ market assortment of items directly to consumers with a 26-week hybrid delivery model. Members customize their order weekly, choosing from produce, meat, dairy, or a share of each.

Green Pasture Farms is in the process of forming a weekly Collingswood delivery site, and will offer home delivery if membership reaches 30 residents. For more information, email Sue Cosgrove or visit their website.

Otolith Community Supported Seafood
Otolith offers consumers the opportunity to purchase shares of fresh seafood for the spring and summer season at a price much cheaper than is available in supermarkets. The fish are wild-caught from sustainable Alaskan fisheries, and flash-frozen immediately. Last year a friend who participated in this CSA got 15 pounds of salmon delivered to her home in Collingswood at a cost of less than $12 /pound. Otolith is currently accepting members for the upcoming season.

Buying Clubs and Co-Ops
These are similar to CSAs with two key exceptions. First, a buying club typically does not require a seasonal commitment or any up-front money. Members purchase what they want, when they want it, and can opt out at any time.

Second, buying clubs and cooperatives usually distribute items from a variety of farms, although a single farm may choose to use a buying club model for its direct sales.

What follows is a short list of some of the buying clubs available in our area. The upcoming Collingswood Green Festival (10 am to 2pm April 21) is an excellent opportunity to learn more about these programs and meet their representatives.

Winter Harvest
Philadelphia Winter Harvest Buying Club offers its only delivery site on this side of the bridge in Collingswood! We convinced them to establish a site here several years ago, and it’s now one of their most successful.

Winter Harvest offers a huge variety of locally, sustainably produced food items from farms and businesses in eastern Pennsylvania. Items include baby spinach grown in biofuel-heated greenhouses, a variety of root vegetables, mushrooms, fruits, jams/jellies/preserves, milk and yogurt, Amish sauerkraut, pastured eggs, soups and breads prepared with local ingredients, sausages and meats of all kinds, dried herbs, tofu/seitan, flours, chocolates, teas, soaps, and coffee.

Members order online, then pick up their shares Thursday evenings from November to April on the porch of a local site host. For an application form, visit their website.

Suburban Organics
Suburban Organics offers weekly, year-round home delivery of organic produce to Collingswood-area residents. Differently sized boxes are available at prices cheaper than those at the supermarket. Plus, organic produce isn’t consistently available at supermarkets, which makes this service appealing.

Suburban Organics sources as many items as possible from local farms during the summer. My family has ordered in the past and found the variety of types of produce and fruit included appeal to young children. Weekly orders may be entered online.

Other Groups
In addition to CSAs and buying clubs, there are other opportunities to collectively purchase niche, sustainable food items. The West Jersey/Philadelphia chapter of the Holistic Moms Network (HMN) periodically organizes cooperative buying through its online message board. HMN is a membership-based organization that meets monthly at the Collingswood Library.

(Further off the beaten path, I’ve also heard about a cooperative raw-milk speakeasy of sorts, but you have to be “in the know” about this—which I am not—so ask around town.)