Economies of CSA Scale

I got a behind-the-scenes view of how the CSA operates this week. On Monday afternoon I volunteered to cut raw milk organic cheddar cheese, one of the offerings in this week’s delivery. This morning I worked for several hours to prepare the food to be moved out to the various pick-up sites. It is an impressive but daunting operation.

It even called upon my math skills. I had to figure out how many ounces of Swiss chard every shareholder got when the farmer gave us 60 pounds of chard, etc. Then I had to determine how many pounds each site would get depending on the number of members.

There was loading, schlepping, bagging, counting, labeling, and numerous other somewhat menial tasks. But I was in the company of like-minded people who appreciate the value of fresh and local. I packed all the cheese and the lentils this week. I knew who packed the other items.



As I spread my week’s delivery out on the counter, I had a renewed appreciation of how it was put together.

The CSA is run out of a yoga ashram. As I left, the coordinator told me I had earned extra karma points this week by volunteering!