Sharing in the Bounty and Drought; Farm Members Connect to Nature
Getting kids to eat the vegetables they are familiar with is hard enough. When Cindy Bjornsen was having bushels of kale delivered to her doorstep in Broadlands, making her kids clean their plates got even harder.</br></br>Bjornsen was a member of a community-supported agriculture plan, designed to assure farmers a steady flow of revenue. Members pay a fee to a local farm and in return receive the farm's best crops of that season.</br></br>For someone who wants to support local business and make a connection to the farming community, such plans can be attractive. But they are less than ideal for a household whose main goal is to keep the refrigerator well-stocked, because variables, such as the weather, make it hard to predict what the season's harvest will bring.</br></br>Two years ago, when Bjornsen arranged to get produce from Great Country Farms in Bluemont, a drought caused farmers in the region to produce an unusually large amount of kale, a vegetable from the cabbage family.</br></br>The bushels were too big for her family to finish. She gave away some of the produce to neighbors and did not renew her membership.