A yard sale, for real

By now everybody has heard of, if not bought shares in, a CSA -- that is, a Community-Supported Agriculture delivery service. You know, it's this way of supporting farmers by subscription, i.e., buying a box a week of whatever produce they've grown and harvested, which they then deliver to your house. I see posts about people's CSA box arriving, the delight at receiving that week's representative bounty from someone's patch of dirt somewhere.  I love the idea of CSA, the way it connects people to what's growing in their area and gets them eating more locally and cleaner.

But I'm thinking maybe we need to go even smaller.

Capitalizing on how stoked I still am by the Marin Open Garden Exchange I attended last weekend, I think I want to start Neighborhood Supported Agriculture for those of us in urban/suburban areas.  CSAs are great, but if it's possible, why not get your food from a farmer who doesn't need a car to reach you?  How about supporting your neighborhood farmer, the cultivation-mad person on your same block who would love to make a living from the greens and herbs and honey her efforts produce?  Yes, I love giving it away and trading it for other good stuff that my garden isn't yielding yet.  But I could love it even more if I could make some small living from it.

So sometime this summer I think I'll experiment with having a farm stand in my driveway.  

I have to try it, right?

There's a guy a few blocks away who puts up a very Peanuts-kind of stand on the sidewalk in front of his house and leaves produce out with a sign asking for contributions to some children's organization.  That's very nice, but I think I'll experiment with putting up a sign on our busy street for a weekend real-life yard sale, and see how many garage sale hunters I can lure with the promise of fresh lettuce and whatever else is growing.  And honey.  Always honey.

If nothing else, I'd love to know I'm feeding my neighbors, to know that three houses over or on the next block, they're feasting on something we grew here in the same microclimate, without requiring an extra drive from there to here, just a bike ride or little walk away.

I have no idea if it will work, but that's what I think I like about it so much.  I mean, really, isn't that how it used to work -- that people would hawk their wares, the product of their labor, right there on-site in the village?  

Naturally, I'm not ready to go yet, having already dehydrated and baked and cooked into jam all of the apricots.  But as soon as the basil and lettuce starts coming in, I'll put up my signs, set up the card table and see what happens.

And you, you'll get to read about it here first. Stay tuned! 

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