It’s an interesting time to be studying the farmworkers movement with increased support for unions around the country after decades of declining membership, including at the United Farm Workers. This week we looked at other ways farms are trying to raise awareness of and support their farmworkers and focused on community supported agriculture (or CSA), a system that allows farms to connect directly with customer-members via weekly deliveries of produce to their neighborhoods and homes.
In the classroom we watched a short profile of Eatwell Farm in Dixon, California, a farm I happen to have been a member of since 2007. We learned about the farm from Lorraine Walker, who took over Eatwell after her husband died of cancer. Eatwell has about 1000 members throughout the Bay Area who get CSA boxes every week. Members can donate to a share care fund that translates to boxes Eatwell then delivers for free to people who are battling cancer. Members receive a weekly newsletter with updates about the farm crew and what the farm’s challenges are (for example, how the extremely wet winter weather this year has prevented the crew from getting plant starts into the ground, which will delay production and harvest of many crops like strawberries later in the spring). We’ve spent time in earlier weeks discussing the government supports and benefits that are out of reach for many of California’s farmworkers; at Eatwell, members have the opportunity to donate to a special fund that goes directly to the crew to thank them for their hard work in feeding the community.
In the classroom, the second graders made a stir-fry from everything in the Eatwell CSA box for the week, which included mizuna, cabbage, kale, turnips, chives, arugula, and mandarin oranges. This is a recipe that can easily accommodate whatever produce you have on hand, and is a satisfying meal served over a bed of warm rice. The best part of being a part of a CSA is that direct connection to our food producers! We sent Lorraine a text and photo of our class enjoying the stir-fry and it was fun for students to see her respond with words of encouragement.
