About Community-Supported Agriculture
A CSA is an association of food buyers and growers who have pledged to support local farms and share the risks and benefits of food production. CSA members, or subscribers, pay at the onset of the growing season for a share of the anticipated harvest; once harvesting begins, they periodically receive shares of produce.
TRENTON, Ga. – Following in Stephen Bontekoe’s footsteps on his four-acre mountaintop farm just outside Trenton, it becomes a game of not stepping on precisely positioned plant rows running back and forth here and there.
He rattles off why the strawberries are here, why the kale in the tunnel does better than the kale planted outdoors on the other side of the goat pen. He explains why the pigs, Sassy and Frassy, are stomping around on crushed coconut shells and why the bees don’t sting you when you pass by their box.
Bontekoe breaks a slim stem from a growing dill plant and presents it with an outstretched arm – try this. Crushed in the hand, the dill smells strong, but tastes stronger.
This is what Bontekoe wants his potential customers to understand: in today’s commercial on-demand world, he and a growing number of farmers everywhere still believe in the value of small-scale, locally grown produce and the intimate relationship between farmer and food.