CSA's Good for You...Great for Your Kids

Pivotal is pleased to introduce guest blogger Caitlin Murray Giles.

Are you thinking about ways to make your family a bit "greener" this summer? I have the perfect idea for you -- join a CSA. Here, I'll tell you why I think that our CSA has been great for my kids and then you can decide for yourself.

My kids' approach to vegetables is fairly typical: skeptical about most and downright oppositional about others. Sure, they'll eat broccoli or mixed greens. Maybe even the occasional roasted pepper or grilled ear of corn. But serve them a roasted beet or a bowl of butternut squash soup and expect some serious resistance.

My husband and I are trying to raise good eaters because we love food and we want our three little ones to love food too. So we spend a lot of time together thinking about food, preparing food and eating food together as a family. Sometimes our brood devours dinner plates full of the season's finest offerings and other times we get scrunched up faces, skeptical scowls and "no thanks."

But we press on.

I think that the first step to healthy family eating is actually getting the fresh produce into your house. And that is why I absolutely love our CSA. What the heck is a CSA, you ask? A CSA (short for Community Supported Agriculture) is an arrangement where the "shareholders" (that's you) pay a group of farmers in advance for a "share" of their collective crop throughout the growing season. Under this model, the farmers get a steady market for their crops and you get to enjoy the fruits of their labor throughout the summer and fall. It is like having a mini farmer's market in your own kitchen!

We are about to begin our third season with Home Grown Wisconsin, a cooperative of over twenty farms committed to using sustainable and organic practices. We pick up our weekly box at a location less than a mile from our house. The contents of each week's box are always a surprise, although we get an email a day in advance telling us what to expect -- plus recipes and tips for storing and using the produce.

Our CSA experience has opened up a whole world of produce for our entire family. I am the first to admit that things like lacinato kale, kohlrabi, and garlic scapes make me a little bit nervous. But each week, we pick up our box and open it together. We immediately devour the berries or split open the melon. We examine the contents and talk about what looks good, what looks unfamiliar and what looks like it would be fun to play catch with (usually an eggplant or something). We touch. We smell. We taste. We do it together.

Our CSA has been a great opportunity to teach our children that zucchini and blueberries don't just appear on grocery store shelves. This is a weekly chance to talk to my urban-dwelling babes about the fact that people work hard to grow the food we eat.

My kids aren't willing to try every single item in our weekly boxes. But they do try some new things. And they watch Mom and Dad eat all sorts of things and talk about how delicious it all was.

It has quite simply been a very good thing.

If you think that a CSA would be a good thing for your family too, check out Local Harvest to find one that fits your needs.

Caitlin Murray Giles is a freelance writer and mama of three living in (and loving) the Wicker Park neighborhood. She chronicles her adventures with her little ones at A Hen and Two Three Chicks. Her work has appeared locally in Chicago Parent and Mindful Metropolis.