CSA Project with Love is Love Farms

This year, we were fortunate enough to receive a PTO grant to purchase CSA shares from Love is Love farm for our kids each week in May. We have three main goals for this project:

We are receiving our CSA shares from our friend Joe from Love is Love Farm right down the street in Decatur. Love is Love Farm at Gaia Gardens focuses on growing a tremendous diversity of vegetables and fruit employing soil-based agricultural practices, such as crop-rotation, cover cropping and labor-intensive, but delightfully rewarding, hand weeding, seeding, and harvesting.

You can meet Joe from Love is Love Farm at our Farmer’s Market Tours. He will be at the East Atlanta Village Farmer’s Market with us on Thursday, May 9th from 4:00 – 8:00 and the Grant Park Farmer’s Market with us on Sunday, May 12th from 9:30 – 11:30.

Each week when we receive our shares, students will have the opportunity to taste and learn about new produce – how it grows, its nutritional value, how its prepared here and around the world, now and throughout history.

The produce in our share varies depending on the season, and crop production.  These are some of the varieties destined for the field: Arugula, Basil, Beans, Beets, Broccoli, Cabbage, Carrots, Cherry Tomatoes, Collard Greens, Cucumbers, Eggplant, Endive, Fall Radishes, Fall Squash, Fennel, Field Peas, Figs, Ginger, Garlic, Heirloom Tomatoes, Leeks, Lettuce Heads, Kale, Kohl Rabi, Melons, Muscadines, Mustard Greens, Okra, Pac Choi, Potatoes, Salad Greens, Salad Radishes, Strawberries, Sweet Turnips, Sweet Onions, Sweet Peppers, Sweet Potatoes, Summer Squash, Rutabagas, Tomatoes, and Watermelons.

Check our weekly blog updates to see what we received in our CSA!

The use of CSA’s as a model for producer-consumer exchange began independently in Japan and Europe during the twentieth century in response to globalization and increasingly large-scale industrial agriculture.  Offsetting the start-up costs of seeds and supplies, families pre-paid for the portions of the coming crop, sharing the risks and rewards of the season.  In Atlanta today, CSA structures have myriad shapes and sizes, but all support the belief that a close farmer-consumer relationship promotes freshness and quality of food and combats the environmental costs of the long distances typically traveled from field to plate.  CSA programs seek to facilitate a close relationship with our members, while providing a weekly share of the freshest and best food from our seasonal harvests.