Don’t worry! In addition to the great tips and recipes you’ll get from your fellow CSA members, NPR put out a great list of cookbooks highlighting easy to prepare and delicious recipes focused around eating locally. Check it out here.
Tag: sustainable
Meet Your Farmer!
We are happy to announce that next Wednesday, May 26th from 6 – 8 PM will be our Farmer Meet and Greet, with Martin and Gaudencia Rodriguez of MimoMex Farm. This is your time to introduce yourself to the people growing your food, to get to know them, and to ask them questions about the farm!This event will take place at our distribution location, Hebron SDA Church at 1256 Dean Street on the corner of New York Avenue. Refreshments will be provided.
This event is open to all current and interested members of the Central Brooklyn CSA, so spread the word to anyone who may be interested in joining.
Why Join? Because You Can Make A Difference!
CSA’s help you make personal changes that will likely positively affect more than just you. What a way to begin to make a difference.
A lot of the news I read and watch tells me that we all need to try harder to live within our means. Whether that means, sticking to a budget, or making more Earth-aware decisions, or even watching what we eat so that we can enjoy life and avoid costly trips to the doctor. There is no one thing any of us can do that will improve every aspect of our lives, but for my money, joining a CSA is a great place to start.
Spend Differently
The membership fee in most CSA’s goes directly to the farmer as seed money, and Central Brooklyn CSA is no different. The reasoning is simple: by knowing whom they are planting for and how much they need to harvest, farmers are able to budget better and ultimately save money. CSA memberships can help members apply that same logic to their personal finances. By pre-paying for a season’s worth of produce, members can better plan their grocery budgets, save money week-to-week, and not have to worry about the price of carrots or lettuce going up every time they go shopping.
Buy Differently
Buying food from local farmers is literally investing in your own community. Spending money in your neighborhood keeps business in your neighborhood and encourages those businesses to provide the products and services you like. But buying food from local farmers is also an investment in our global community. Not only does buying from a local farmer reduce the gas used to ship food by as much as 90%, but often, as is the case with our farm MimoMex, CSA farmers refrain from using petroleum-based fertilizers, which also reduces the use of (and harmful by-products) of fossil-fuels. Did you realize that 1 in every 6 gallons of oil used in America is used for agriculture? By joining a CSA and buying locally-grown foods, you can help change this.
Eat Differently
If making a change can help you live a more healthy and productive life, isn’t that a change worth making? Sometimes the most important change we can make is within ourselves. For some folks, the hardest part of joining a CSA is committing to eat fresh vegetables and fruit. Cooking at home and eating produce everyday is different if you are not used to it, true enough. Replacing chips, crackers, and sugary snacks with fresh produce can reduce your risk of diabetes, high blood-pressure, obesity, and cancer. What is more, the Central Brooklyn CSA is committed to helping our members find new, delicious, and healthy ways to prepare their produce!
CSA’s help you make personal changes that will likely positively affect more than just you. What a way to begin to make a difference.
Check out our shout-out on “Not Eating Out In New York”
Our good friend Cathy Erway wrote a great piece on the Central Brooklyn CSA… There is still time to sign up, but hurry! Shares are moving fast!
Why Join? Because You Belong!
Becoming a member of the Central Brooklyn CSA is a great way to meet and connect with neighbors, support local business, make a positive impact on the planet, save money and get incredible food at an incredible price!
If you are keeping count this is the fourth installment in our “Why Should I Join?” series. If you want to read the earlier posts here is the intro, part 1 and part 2!
Do Something in Brooklyn
If you are like me, and you ride the train or bus to work, you may feel like very little of your life gets spent in your neighborhood, not inside your home. For me, one of the most fulfilling parts of a being a CSA member has been the fact that I get to meet and work with people in my neighborhood who almost always have at least one thing in common with me.
There are so many things to do in Brooklyn, it is often hard deciding which one is the right thing for you. Becoming a member of the Central Brooklyn CSA is a great way to meet and connect with neighbors, support local business, make a positive impact on the planet, save money and get incredible food. It may seem too good to be true, but it is the real deal!
Every adult member is expected to put in at least four (4) hours of volunteering over the course of 22 weeks, but you can put in as much as you desire. So if you find that you enjoy compiling and testing recipes with a new friend from Crown Heights, or working on our blog with a neighbor in Clinton Hill, or participating in nutrition workshop in Stuyvesant Heights, or just hanging out and cracking jokes with other members at Hebron SDA Church on distribution days, becoming a member is all it takes!
DEADLINE EXTENDED! (FOR NOW)
We would love for everyone to join the Central Brooklyn CSA, and even though we cannot make that happen, we are doing our best to make sure everyone who is interested at least has an opportunity.
Great news: due to the incredible response over the last week, we are extending the deadline to join the Central Brooklyn CSA! We are proud of the opportunity our CSA provides for members of our community to eat well for less, and want to make sure everyone that is interested in becoming a member has a chance to. Having said that, vegetable shares (standard memberships) and fruit and egg shares are going fast, so if you would like to become a member, we urge you to move quickly.
We have made a commitment to make at least 40% of our shares available to members making less than $35, 000, and we are keeping that commitment. However, in fairness to all potential members, we are accepting applications on a first come, first serve basis. (In other words, if you are planning on joining, you should know that the availability of shares is impacted by your income level.)
We would love for everyone to join the Central Brooklyn CSA, and even though we cannot make that happen, we are doing our best to make sure everyone who is interested at least has an opportunity.
If you are interested but have questions or financial concerns, please contact us (no need to panic!). If you sent in your deposit and membership agreement and want to make sure we received it, email us at CentralBrooklynCSA@gmail.com and we will get back to you right away.
Eat well, until we meet again!
CSA Sign-Up Deadline is April 30th!
This is a friendly reminder that the sign-up deadline for the Central Brooklyn CSA is Friday, 30 April 2010!
For all of the wonderful people we have met who have yet to submit their membership agreements and deposits, this is a friendly reminder that the “official” sign-up deadline for the Central Brooklyn CSA is Friday, 30 April 2010!
A breakdown of what it will cost you to join the CSA is available here. If you are interested in joining and need a few more days to round up your deposit, are wondering about the volunteer requirement, or have any other questions, you may e-mail us at CentralBrooklynCSA@gmail.com, or contact Maia by phone!
You can mail in your deposits and membership agreements to this address. (The minimum deposit is 10% unless you are paying with food stamps, in which case, it is $0!)
We have not finalized the deadline for fruit and egg shares, but you cannot sign-up for either of those unless you have signed up for a vegetable share!
Looking forward to hearing from you soon!
