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Wow! What a day! A little less than a year ago, I came to Lancaster for a half day to tour a few Amish farms and to learn about an Amish CSA cooperative called Lancaster Farm Fresh. If you read my book, you'll read about the CSA in chapter 5 (I think... I'm doing this from memory) because I loved it so much when I first visited. It's a scalable CSA model. Several farm families came together to form the cooperative a few years ago, and over time they've grown (both in number of farms and in number of CSA members). They sell some food to schools, they do some wholesale sales, and they are starting to get into farmers' markets too.
What I love about it most is that it's scalable... if new farms want to be part of a CSA, they don't have to do it all by themselves. Instead they can join Lancaster Farm Fresh, where they will automatically have a market for their goods and plenty of years of experience guiding them to be successful. This way, the farms can share trucks and warehouses, as well as non-farming jobs like marketing. And (my favorite part) because the cooperative is all organic with strict standards for humane treatment of animals, several farms have really shaped up the way they grow crops and raise livestock in order to join the cooperative.
What I found most impressive was the story of one farmer in particular. Last year I visited Aaron's beautiful farm when he showed a group of us foodies around. It was very clear how much he loves farming, and I loved this innovative contraption he'd come up with to harvest tomatoes. His tomatoes grew in a hoophouse, if I remember right, and he had lightweight, movable shelving hung from the ceiling that he could pull along with him as he harvested tomatoes, placing the tomatoes he picked in boxes on the shelves as he went.
The story continues this year, when blogger Anonymous Bosch took me to Reading Terminal Market. I went looking for the Lancaster Farm Fresh stand while we were there. When we found it, he looked at the heirloom tomatoes and said he thought that his wife bought these exact tomatoes recently. When we went back to his place, I saw that he did have that variety of tomatoes at home. Little did I know that Aaron - the very same man whose farm I visited last year - grew the tomatoes!!!
Today I visited Lancaster Farm Fresh again and spoke with Casey, the same person who led the tour last year. He showed us the heirloom tomatoes and commented that they were Aaron's. "Wait a second," I said, "Didn't we visit his farm last year?" Casey confirmed that yes, we (attendees of a food conference I attended who took the field trip to Lancaster, PA) did visit that farm. Wow. Talk about things coming full circle.
I was sorry to hear that Aaron shattered his leg in two places this year and he's been unable to work. However, I was thrilled to hear that in the classic Amish style (similar to a barnraising, where an entire community comes together to build an Amish family a barn all in one day), the community came together to plant Aaron's crops and they've been taking care of them and harvesting them while he's recovering from his injury. I realize that many people think that progress left the Amish in the dust, but in terms of their strong community and willingness to help one another out in their times of need, I think they are far ahead of the rest of us.
Many thanks to Lydia of SSBN and blogger Monkeybiz for hosting me while I'm here in beautiful Lancaster, and thanks to Casey of Lancaster Farm Fresh for taking time to chat with me today. This is one of the most beautiful areas in the entire country in my opinion and I'm just thrilled to have a chance to visit for the second time in a year.
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