When I planned to go to Greensgrow I expected to see some raised beds, a small CSA, and of course some very inspiring people. What I actually saw once I got there blew my mind. Philly city blocks are smaller than the NY City blocks I am used to, and the folks at Greensgrow had this place packed with plants of all shapes, sizes, and varieties.
Seriously, they had everything from exotic flowers, water plants, herbs, lettuce, shrubs, you name it, they probably had it or some version of it.Not only did they have tons of different vegetation they had chickens, a house for making bio-diesel fuel, bees, hydroponics, a compost toilet, and a farm stand. There was a self-guided walking tour of the farm with stations describing the different systems at work. A very effect tool to help educate people without taking too much of the farmer’s time.
Besides the diversity of what grows at Greensgrow I was more impressed with the food that wasn’t grown there. Farm manager and founder Mary Corby sat down with me to give me the low-down on how Greensgrow runs it’s CSA.
Even given their small size Greensgrow has a 375 member CSA! That’s a heck of a lot of people. They are able to manage such a large number by acting as a distributor for other local farms and businesses. They set a 75 mile “local” limit to who they buy from, and have about 80 different farmers and growers. In a given year they BUY about $300,000 worth of food from other growers to sell in their CSA. If that’s not supporting local businesses and farmers I don’t know what is.
Farmers who supply good for the CSA very often come and hang out during pick up so people can talk to them about the food they’re getting. Even though the person can’t see the farm they get to know the farmer and ask him about his/her methods.
I was surprised that this isn’t something all farmer’s consider doing. In fact there are a lot that do, but I have talked to a few about the idea and it was definitely something they had not thought of. So to you farmers, us consumers love the consolidation, and it works out great as stable income for you. Whether you’re on the distributing end or the supply end of things, I think a reasonable amount of consolidation is a good thing. Just not too much where it gets bigger than you can handle or starts to compromise integrity.
Find out more at the Greensgrow website.
Even though they couldn’t help out with the rain storm that hit when I was visiting Greensgrow they did help make the trip possible. My thanks to Pete and Gerry’s Organic Eggs.
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