IN SEASON

Freshest of the Fresh

An introduction to local CSAs and information on securing truly local produce this spring.

In the age of the internet, it’s easy to become a little disconnected— from people, from activities, even from food. After all, when there’s an app for everything from your daily horoscope and local newspaper to online classes and virtual friend meet-ups, it’s easy to see how we can become at least a little bit removed from what’s happening around us.

As we complete food orders via Amazon Prime or Shoprite from Home—no doubt modern conveniences that this writer couldn’t live without—we also lose touch with our food. Not the eating of it (there’s still no app that can chew and digest a burger for you), but with the origins, growing and seasonality of the things we call breakfast, lunch and dinner.

As spring approaches, it’s a good time to take notice of not just the green leaves, yellow forsythia and vibrant flowers that dot our landscape, but the lettuces and herbs that are the some of the first edible harbingers of the season.

And while grocery stores abound with brightly colored varieties of fruits and vegetables, this is your chance to dig in a little deeper and find out exactly where your food is coming from. Not interested, or able, to plant your own garden? A definitive lack of green thumbs? You can still get the freshest of the fresh foods, and learn a bit about where they’re coming from, by participating in a CSA.

According to Wikipedia, a CSA, short for community-supported agriculture, is “a system that connects the producer and consumers within the food system more closely by allowing the consumer to subscribe to the harvest of a certain farm or group of farms.”

What that means for you, the consumer, is that by paying a farm or group of farms up front—thus providing some of the income needed to actually plant and grow crops—you get a portion of those crops during the harvest season. This system enables us as consumers to have a direct link to our food, reduce our carbon footprint, have access to some unexpected deliciousness, and even support local farmers. A win-win-win all around.

Lucky for us, we’ve got some wonderful CSAs in the West Chester area.

Pick-Your-Own Highland Orchards might be known for the fall festitivities, but their CSA is a great way to secure produce all year.

And while they’ve all got vegetables and fruits that are screaming summer, they’re each a little bit different.

WEST CHESTER COOPERATIVE

The West Chester Cooperative is a member-owned grocery store in West Chester Borough, in the making.

The brainchild of Suzanne Adams and currently under the leadership of President and Member Owner #4, Marnie Rhen, the West Chester Co-op has been working toward their goal of a borough-located, member-owned and well-stocked grocery store for six years.

“A co-op is a community owned organization developed to fulfill the needs of the community, owned by individual members of the community,” says Rhen, who has been involved in the initiative since the beginning.

To help bring awareness to the co-op initiative, they started running a CSA program five years ago. The West Chester Co-op CSA program gets their produce and meats from different local purveyors, including Crawford Organics in East Earl for certified local produce; pastured meat from Katt & Mathy Farms in Cochranville; Pastured Birds from Keiser’s Pheasantry in Glen Rock; and Bloomsberry Honey from Chadds Ford.

While those places are all over Penn

sylvania, your drive won’t be. By signing up for the CSA program at West Chester Co-op, your local and sustainable food will be delivered to the borough every Tuesday at Holy Trinity Church, and is available for pickup from 3 to 7p.m. To make things even more convenient— and is there anything more convenient than having a packed-up grocery order that includes the best of the best from around the area?—there is no parking required. CSA members only need to pull into the church’s driveway off of West Union and the packaged food is just a few steps away.

So how does it work? First, know that each vendor has its own buying program, which means you don’t have to be a member of the West Chester Co-op to purchase their products.

However, becoming a member of the West Chester Cooperative has its own benefits, not least of all the discount provided to members through each vendor—2% at Crawford Organics and at Katt & Mathy Farms; 5% at Keiser’s Pheasantry and Bloomsberry Honey. In addition, the West Chester Co-op website acts as a hub for the four vendors that make up the CSA, providing onestop shopping as well as a one-stop pickup for members.

By taking part in the CSA, members are helping to support local farms and growers. And the reward is an abundance of options for getting absurdly fresh food.

For starters, members can choose to purchase from some, or all, of the vendors. From there, members can opt in to certain buying seasons. For Crawford Farms, which provides the produce for West Chester Co-op, there is an Early Start CSA that runs for four weeks in the month of April, followed by a Spring/ Summer CSA running from May through August, and more through the year.

The Early Start is a great option for people just joining their first CSA, since it doesn’t include a lengthy period of time or an overwhelming amount of produce. The harvest expectations for the Early Start CSA include greens and herbs like spinach, arugula, cilantro, lettuce, and kale, as well as beets, bok choy, carrots, chard, popcorn, potatoes, radishes, spring onions, and sweet potatoes. Each standard box contains seven or eight items, and mini boxes contain five or six items.

For those craving summer—and the produce that comes with it—the 16-week Spring/Summer CSA program is fresh produce galore. Harvests include things like strawberries, broccoli, cabbage and scallions in addition to the aforementioned veggies in April and May; green beans, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, corn and more in June and July; and peppers, pears, garlic, concord grapes, cherry tomatoes, watermelon and more in August.

For the meat and poultry CSA options, items can be ordered individually, so members aren’t required to purchase a separate freezer to store everything. Need a chicken or meat for a Sunday night dinner? You can order a single hen or porterhouse steak.

For those who participate, the benefits extend far past CSA membership, however. Becoming a member of the West Chester Co-op—a one time $400 fee paid at once or in $25 monthly installments—gives members ownership and a say in how the store is run,

Co-op CSA Joining the West Chester Co-op’s

CSA doesn’t give you access to just one farm but a weekly pickup with a mixed bag of PA-based specialty farms and vendors.

discounts, patronage dividends, and voting privileges once the store opens, a goal that Wren hopes will come to fruition within the next year.

Wren sees the store as something that will fill a need, acting as a hub for the borough community as well as providing a walkable option for groceries.

“The economic model of a food co-op is that the money stays in our community,” says Wren, of the $17 million that West Chester annually spends on groceries—usually at corporate stores like Giant and Shoprite.

HIGHLAND ORCHARDS

Highland Orchards is the mac daddy of the local farm and CSA programs,

with an operation that, while family owned, is chock-full of activities, from a seasonal pop-up wine and beer garden to pancake breakfasts to hayrides to the Easter Bunny.

The history of Highland Orchards goes back to 1832, when Clark Webster bought land in Delaware. Generations later, in 1940, John Webster gave the farmland the name Highland Orchards and purchased the Pennsylvania land— now the Highland Orchards we know and love in West Chester—in 1941. At that time, the West Chester farm primarily grew apples.

“A farm is really a community of people. We are very community based, and try to make it very engaging, talking to our neighbors and finding out what they need...” “” “”

As the farm was passed down through the generations—John’s daughter Elizabeth Hodge took over with her husband in the 1950s, and their kids took over management in 1986—it was greatly expanded. These days, the farm grows a variety of fruits including—but not limited to—peaches, strawberries, cherries, black and red raspberries and sweet corn.

As a full working farm, the High- land Orchards CSA program works quite differently from the CSA offered by West Chester Cooperative. Highland Orchards offers a gift card. The reloadable card enables card members to receive special discounted prices on Highland’s Pick Your Own, as well as on freshly picked (but not by you) fruits and vegetables, goodies from the bakery, and additional items at the Farm Market and Bakery. If you’re thinking about participating in this program, do it now—there’s a special 10% discount (purchase a $500 CSA gift card and save $50, etc.) on any CSA card that ends on May 1.

While you don’t need a CSA card to purchase from the Highland Orchards Farm Market and Bakery or to go fruit picking, the CSA card provides users with discounts, and continuity—if you know you have money on your card, you’re more likely to keep going back to pick the next available fruit.

This isn’t a tiny field of fruit, either. At Highland, the orchard contains a big selection of crops, and the pick-yourown program continues to grow in popularity, with shuttles taking guests to the far ends of the orchard to pick their fruit.

“Things have changed,” says Art Whitehair, the Events Coordinator at Highland Orchards. “People used to pick and can. Now it’s really recreational. We drive them out in shuttles that look like safari trucks—it’s like an adventure.”

Extended Season

Even as early as March, CSA members at Highland Orchards had access to these weekly windfalls.

With some crops a 10- or 15-minute drive from the entrance, it’s an adventure indeed. But it’s worth it.

“The benefit is that you really can’t get it any fresher than when you pick it yourself,” says Whitehair.

While dates are approximate, and weather conditions and demand determine the true supply of fruits and vegetables available for picking, the general schedule includes rhubarb from mid-May to mid-August; strawberries for most of June; sweet cherries from early to mid-June; pie (sour) cherries from mid to late June; black and red raspberries in late June; blueberries in most of July; peaches from mid-July to early September; plums from late July to August; sweet corn from late July to early September; blackberries in most of August; nectarines in mid-August; pears from late August to mid-September; fall red raspberries from late August until frost; pumpkins from mid-September through October; and finally apples, from mid-July through October.

If you’d rather skip the picking, the next best bet for freshness is to visit the

Highland Orchards Farm Market and Bakery, where you can also use your CSA card. In addition to produce from Highland Orchards, the Farm Market includes produce from neighboring farms that focus more on vegetables, as well as jams, jellies, cheese, butter, milk, canning supplies, flowers, local honey, and even gifts.

Visit the Farm Market for no other reason than to figure out what to do with all of the fruit you’ve picked… our advice is to let the pie selection at Highland Orchards guide you. Whether it’s Strawberry Rhubarb, Peach Praline, Lemon Blueberry, Apple, Sweet Potato Crunch or any of the other scrumptious flavors, the bakery utilizes just about every variety of fruit available on the farm. Orders for pies—as well as their “Philly’s Best” Apple Cider Donuts—can even be placed in advance.

In addition to their own baked goods, the bakery also carries gluten-free items: Freedom Mini donuts and Sunset Park Gluten-Free cookies, brownies and whoopie pies.

The Highland Orchards CSA program

is less about the convenience of a box of freshly picked vegetables, and more about the community activities that a pre-paid card ensure you’ll get to: from spring growing tours to story and pick activities, Highland Orchards is as much a farm as it is the perfect spot for a family activity.

THORNBURY FARMS

Just like the West Chester Cooperative CSA is about building a community grocery store, and the Highland Orchards CSA focuses on farm tours and activities, Thornbury Farms has its own unique draw: its history.

Thornbury Farm was founded in 1709 with a stone house that was the first quarried home in Pennsylvania. The house has been added to approximately every 80 years, and among its many claims to fame are that it was used as the first public library in Chester County, and as a stop on the Underground Railroad. If that’s not enough, according to Randell Spackman, owner of Thornbury, the farm is the site of part of the Revolutionary War Battle of Brandywine.

Vegetable Bounty Thornbury Farms has extensive greenhouses that allow them to get a jump on the growing season.

“The back field is protected under a permanent easement,” says Spackman. “It’s a historic site…it was the largest battle of the American Revolution.”

During parts of the American Revolution, the barn at Thornbury was used to hold prisoners, while the house was used as a hospital. And when people died, as they do in war, they were buried on the property. As such, Thornbury has been featured on an episode of Ghost Hunters on the SyFy Channel.

A history aficionado, Spackman combines his knowledge of the past with his love of the farm, noting that both things require a sense of past and a respect for the land.

Part of keeping a family farm growing, explains Spackman, is to make it engaging, giving the community a reason to visit. Hence the CSA program as well as

the tours and events that are often held at Thornbury.

“A farm is really a community of people. We are very community based, and try to make it very engaging, talking to our neighbors and finding out what they need,” says Spackman, adding, “We also want the farm to be a focal point for history.”

Spackman has been offering the CSA program at Thornbury for about a decade, in an effort to keep the farm alive and engage the local community.

“Everyone goes to box stores,” says Spackman. “We want people to realize how important it is to support a local farm. The CSA is a way for people to help farmers get started on the growing season, buying seeds, etc. The people pay up front and then each week they get a portion of the produce grown on the farm or with other farms. We’re all in this together; people can learn what it takes to grow a head of lettuce.”

With over a hundred participating members, the Thornbury Farm CSA

About the Experience Making the trip out to Thornbury

Farms is rewarding in more ways than simply collecting fresh produce — the farm is a destination in itself.

program starts the first Thursday in June with pickups for members through October. In addition to the selection of produce that guests can pick up— Thornbury generally has all the produce out with a list of how many of each item can be taken home by CSA members each week—CSA members can get discounts at the Thornbury Farm Market, which is open on weekends, as well as on-site classes and demonstrations.

The classes are another thing that sets Thornbury apart. In addition to classes on planting, Thornbury will host things like a Bread and Brewing Class, where bread is baked in a historic beehive oven and beer is brewed colonial style over a fire, just like Thomas Jefferson used to brew; a big party on July 3, known as Treason Day, which celebrates the last day under the King’s rule; as well as classes on soil health and history.

Just as other organizations work with multiple vendors to provide diversification for their customers, so too does Thornbury, which provides produce from other farms at their farm market.

“You have to diversify,” says Spackman. “People won’t come in for a hundred pounds of peas.”

BECOME A MEMBER

It’s spring. Time to try some new recipes and use the freshest of fruits and veggies. And while you can certainly make do at a regular grocery store, in the spirit of spring, try something new. Joining a CSA will help a local farm, provide you with the freshest of foods, and very likely teach you something along the way.