Community Supported Agriculture with Mountain View Farm

Eat­ing local foods has never been eas­ier since Com­mu­nity Sup­ported Agri­cul­ture (CSA) has become so pop­u­lar.  The rela­tion­ship between food grow­ers and con­sumers is more inti­mate as we are able to con­tract with grow­ers to pro­vide the food we want to cre­ate a more vibrant and healthy lifestyle.

I have been for­tu­nate to be part of three dif­fer­ent CSA more or less for 13 years.  This year I have the priv­i­lege of get­ting my pro­duce from Ben Per­rault and Liz Adler at Moun­tain View Farm in East­hamp­ton, MA.  They have been the top pick in our local Best of the Val­ley awards cho­sen by the res­i­dents of the area for the last three years.  Nam­ing them the best CSA farm in the area.  This is espe­cially poignant con­sid­er­ing the qual­ity of farm­ers run­ning CSA in our area.  I decided to talk to them and find out what makes them so great and get an insight into their farm­ing practices.

Moun­tain View Farm

The Perrault-Adler Family

Moun­tain View Farm (MVF) started in 2006 when they bought their busi­ness from their men­tor.  Their vision was to grow the busi­ness quickly to become eco­nom­i­cally viable, to be acces­si­ble for fam­i­lies as well as the com­mu­nity, to pro­vide safe, nutri­tious food and be a good place for peo­ple to work.

To be eco­nom­i­cally viable the farm needed to be big enough to sus­tain cap­i­tal improve­ments, sup­port their bud­ding fam­ily yet not so big they would not be able to sus­tain the work­load.  Ben pri­mar­ily han­dles the farm­ing and Liz han­dles the mar­ket­ing and com­mu­nity rela­tions.  Together they have a win­ning vision.

As con­scious, sus­tain­able farm­ers they begin with soil fer­til­ity.  As Ben says, “Noth­ing is going to be good if you don’t start [with soil fer­til­ity].”  They use com­post, amend­ments and organic fer­til­iz­ers to ensure the soil had the right nutri­ents to grow qual­ity produce.

They cur­rently own 12 till­able acres of farm­land and lease land within an 8 mile radius of their land in East­hamp­ton, MA.  This cre­ates logis­ti­cal chal­lenges when deter­min­ing what vari­eties of pro­duce will grow in cer­tain loca­tions.  They need to account for soil con­di­tions, plant vari­etals and com­mu­nity access (for the u-pick crops).

Sus­tain­able Farming

To sus­tain soil fer­til­ity and pre­vent pest infes­ta­tion they use an inten­sive crop rota­tion sys­tem.  In sus­tain­able farm­ing this means the farmer does not plant the same fam­ily on the same plot of land within three years of each other to pre­vent pests and pro­mote proper soil uti­liza­tion.  To man­age this inten­sive rota­tion they use a com­plex excel spread­sheet to map the grow­ing sea­son from year to year.

One of the things I was inter­ested in learn­ing about is how they man­age to grow enough food to pro­vide vari­ety for all the shares and give peo­ple value for their money.  Liz explained they use equa­tions based on the num­ber of shares, the amount of land needed to grow the quan­tity of food needed and take into account any excesses or short­ages for pre­vi­ous years. They cur­rently offer full shares for 1000–1200 fam­i­lies in the local area.

Another tool they use to pro­vide for the mem­bers is to keep it sim­ple.  There are always requests for half shares or work exchange.  They have found offer­ing one type of share helps them to keep up with the busy grow­ing season.

The Value of an Aver­age Share

The aver­age share costs $22-$27 per week for a 22-week (5 month) grow­ing sea­son.  Each share gets 14–15 pounds of pro­duce per week and has access to the u-pick crops all sea­son.  The u-pick crops vary depend­ing on what is grow­ing through out the sea­son.  Based on their most cur­rent email we can be look­ing for­ward to flow­ers, herbs, straw­ber­ries, rasp­ber­ries, beans, peas, cherry and plum toma­toes.  Depend­ing on how well a mem­ber uti­lizes the u-pick crops can sig­nif­i­cantly increase the value of a share.  Our fam­ily is able to gather enough herbs to keep us going through the win­ter and the kids look for­ward to pick­ing straw­ber­ries, rasp­ber­ries and toma­toes every year.

In addi­tion to the pro­duce MVF pro­vides, they have also con­nected with local grow­ers and busi­nesses to pro­vide their wares to mem­bers.  It becomes one stop shop­ping for many mem­bers.  MVF offers bread, eggs, but­ter, cheese, honey, local fruits, pick­les, cof­fee, poul­try and pork, milk, kom­bucha, pizza, tofu, yogurt, and grass fed beef from local purveyors.

One of the ben­e­fits to farm­ers and mem­bers I enjoy most is the flex­i­bil­ity for the farmer to exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent vari­eties of plants.  Pro­duce a store won’t buy or sell isn’t a con­cern for CSA farm­ers.  The mem­bers are there­fore given the oppor­tu­nity to try veg­eta­bles they may be less famil­iar with but pro­vide greater vari­ety and in my expe­ri­ence more inter­est­ing taste encoun­ters.  Chil­dren also get a unique oppor­tu­nity to be intro­duced to a whole host of veg­eta­bles.  One thing is cer­tain.  If you buy a CSA share you must love veg­eta­bles because you will be get­ting an abun­dance of great food.

Com­mu­nity Sup­ported Agri­cul­ture in the Community

CSA is more than a busi­ness model.  It con­nects peo­ple with farm­ing, cre­ates sus­tain­able local food for the com­mu­nity, offers farm­ers a finan­cially viable method to prac­tice their love of farm­ing and cre­ates con­nec­tion to our land.  We are for­tu­nate to have such a jewel in our own back­yard that sup­ports our efforts to eat local, fresh food through­out the year.  In addi­tion MVF gives 100,000 pounds of food to the local Food Bank in exchange for land they use to grow their crops.

This year they are also part­ner­ing with a local bicy­cle deliv­ery for peo­ple to get their pick-ups with­out ever leav­ing home.  The ways they build com­mu­nity are endless.

If you are look­ing for a CSA near you check out Local Har­vest.  It is the most com­pre­hen­sive list­ing of local farms, farmer’s mar­kets, stores and resources for the United States.

This sea­son I will be post­ing weekly about or share at MVF to give every­one a glimpse at the vol­ume and vari­ety of food avail­able at your local CSA and how our fam­ily will be using it to sus­tain us through­out the year.

I hope every­one con­sid­ers a CSA share.  If you are or have had a CSA share leave a com­ment below and tell us about your experience.