Greetings CSA Members,

Welcome to the 2007 CSA Season! We will be starting up as planned on Wednesday June 6th in Delmar, Clifton Park, Albany, Round Lake, and at the farm from 4-8:00 and at the Saratoga Farmers’ Market (for those of you who signed up for Wednesdays from 3-6:00). For those members picking up at the Troy or Saratoga Farmers’

Market, opening day will be Saturday June 9th from 9-1:00. Brian and I have been working hard to prepare a season of delicious vegetables for you – trying to make up for the cold, snowy weather earlier in April.

Each week I will post on the website both the newsletter and a recipe to support you in your adventures in this CSA. In this letter I hope to supply you with some guidelines and practical details to help make the CSA as smooth as possible. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with questions, however, for I am sure that we will have missed some of the finer points. One of the most important concerns is the respect and consideration of the distribution site. Please remember both the site and the site host.

At the Markets this year, we plan to have a sign-in table with the particular listed items under or next to it. Please make room for one another as well as the market customers who are not CSA Members. Sometimes you may see myself or one of the Denison Farm crew scrambling to set up. We would love your help if you have the time. If you are picking up at the Friends Meeting House or at a Member’s home, please inquire how you might be helpful and please be considerate of the space being volunteered for the distribution.

If the Troy or Saratoga Farmers’ Market is your distribution site, we are suggesting that you arrive early (within the first 1 ½ - 2 hours) each week for the CSA distribution in order to find a full range of vegetables.

If you cannot pick up your share on a particular week, we suggest that you ask a friend or neighbor to pick up for or instead of you. Just have that person sign in under your name or tell us at the Markets. Please remember that the distribution in Clifton Park, Delmar, and Albany runs from 4-8:00. If you have not picked up by 8:00, your share will be given to either Squash Hunger or to a local food pantry.

• Wednesday pick-up will include 2 Holidays. Both July 4 and October 31 fall on CSA distribution days.

Please plan ahead, for we will be distributing the vegetables on these two days.

• Bring your own bags if you can.

• Please remember your 2nd and 3rd installments, if you are using a payment plan.

• Check the website for updates and newsletters.

• Working Members will receive an email about work schedules.

• Fruit Share will begin either the last week of June or the first week of July. Please check the website and your email.

• New recipes this year from Farmer John Petersen – Angelic Organics CSA

• Please contact us if you need directions to your distribution site or have any questions.

• Please remember to take exactly what is indicated on the white board. The fruit is only for fruit share members. We plan to have strawberries and melons as part of the regular share, but please check the board for the amount to take.

Brian and I are very happy to provide you with a healthy share each week, but we are always subject to and working with the weather and Mother Nature. As much as we intend to provide you with bountiful shares week after week, please know that there may be hailstorms or blight on the tomatoes or raccoons in the corn. This is the moment where you our members step in and know that being part of a CSA means accepting some risks. One member wondered if that meant he was responsible for our mortgage payments.

Now that’s an idea!

Thank you all for your support this season. We are grateful for this partnership so that we can all eat locally and organically. Thank you for your part in this endeavor.

As stated by Alice Waters, a leader of Slow Food in America and Founder of Chez Panisse: “There is a profound disconnection between the kind of human experience that our society values, and the way we actually live our lives. Most people submit unthinkingly in dehumanizing experiences of food-in-workplace cafeterias, food courts, and fast food chains. How can one marvel at the world and then feed oneself in a completely unmarvelous way? I think it’s because we don’t learn the vital relationship of food to agriculture and of food to culture, and how food affects the quality of our everyday lives. There is nothing else as universal. When you understand where your food comes from, you look at the world in an entirely different way.”

Here’s to a great season ahead – Justine and Brian