Delaware Nature Society lets members have a hand in farming

Tillable soil is not something typically found in suburban backyards. Swing sets are much more common than combines and weed whackers more prominent than crop dusters.

But the Delaware Nature Society is starting a Community Supported Agriculture program at Greenville’s Coverdale Farm to bring farm-fresh produce to suburbanites.

“Part of our goal at Coverdale is to connect the consumer with where their food is coming from,” said Jim Wolfer, Coverdale’s farm manager.

And a Community Supported Agriculture program does just that. Members buy a share in the farm at the beginning of the year and then pick up fresh produce every week during the 22-week harvest season, Wolfer explained.

CSA is an idea that originated in Europe in the 1960s over concerns about food safety and the urbanization of agricultural land.

But CSA goes a step further than simply supporting local agriculture, Wolfer said, it’s actually a contract between the shareholder and the farm.

“The shareholder is taking some risk because if it’s a total crop failure and we get nothing, the shareholder gets nothing also,” he said.

Of course, the farmer does everything in his power to keep that from happening. And Daniel Malcomb, the CSA farmer, already has a detailed computer spreadsheet of what to plant when and how long it needs to grow before harvest.

He plans to plant about 50 different types of veggies, with several varieties of each, he said. The larger share ought to meet the weekly vegetable needs of a family of four, while the smaller share is designed for a veggie-loving couple, he said.

“You’ll get some things that you probably won’t see too much at the store,” he said.

For example, Malcomb intends to plant Chinese cabbage, sugar snap peas and a number of different varieties of heirloom tomatoes, which tend to have slightly different flavors than garden variety tomatoes.

There’ll also be standards like carrots, beets, lettuce and peppers, he said, and the CSA will also provide shareholders with recipe ideas for their fresh vegetables.

The CSA will be an educational tool, showing suburbanites accustomed to grocery-store produce which vegetables are actually ripe in each season, Malcomb said.

Plus, participants will learn about the economic impact of shipping food across the country, he said. Though grocery stores can stock sweet peppers all year long, the carbon footprint of those peppers may be enormous.

And the vegetables themselves will be grown in an environmentally-friendly manner. The 2.5-acre CSA field will be managed without chemical fertilizers or pesticides, Wolfer said, and everything, from tilling to harvesting, will be done by hand.

But traditional farming comes with its own challenges.

“You can’t control the weather,” Malcomb said. “Depending on what Mother Nature has in store for us, we’ll have to be a little bit flexible.”

And though there will be a shorter window for enjoying certain fresh vegetables, shareholders will notice a huge difference in flavor by eating fresh food in season, Wolfer said.

The biggest challenge of starting the CSA will be finding an experienced, seasonal labor force to work in the field, he said, but the Delaware Nature Society is confident the program will succeed.

They are starting with 50 shares this year and Wolfer expects the CSA to grow to 200 shares in five years.

The Delaware Nature Society is hoping to create a community through the CSA, he said, and educate people about where their food comes from and how it is grown.