Ask not what your CSA can do for you but what you can do for your CSA…  OK maybe that doesn’t quite work. However, lately I have been thinking somewhere along those lines. This week marks the second annual start of the spring/summer season of my community’s CSA in a suburb of Philadelphia. We knew approximately what time the trucks from rural PA were due in but they still hadn’t come an hour past their scheduled drop-off time. I’d helped unload the trucks in the past, but there was something awesome about the season beginning again. I was restless and excited. I’d marked the date on my calendar weeks before. Turned out that dismissal from my kid’s school came before the truck and I packed my toddler and camera up and got into the minivan to repeat a trip I do more often then I’d like.

I don’t know if any of you lie in wait for your CSA trucks or if I stand alone but it got me wondering what was all that exciting? Was it the veggies themselves or something else? I can honestly say it must be more than the actual delight of staring at the produce—which is beautiful. (Last year my squashes and carrots often acted first as centerpieces before transitioning to table food.) Perhaps it is my artificial connection with the land that is so wonderful. The farmers are a conduit for me, my liaison to the lands. Or maybe it has to do with community. Am I getting a side order of community with my heaping share for the week? Sometimes I’d like to think so…

My CSA is mostly made up of people who belong to my orthodox synagogue. Since our inception last year our membership has more than doubled. However it is still small relative to the crowds I imagine arrive at the pick-up spots in Manhattan.  Because of our “manageable” number of families, which is a few less than 30, I began thinking I could plan extracurricular events like pot-lucks and possible field trips and speakers. But the more I think about it, the more I think maybe the beauty of the CSA begins and ends with the veggies themselves.

I was wondering what other people’s opinions are on the interplay between CSA and community? Are you looking for more from the experience or do people mostly want to pick-up and rush home for cutting boards and knives?