Community Shared Agriculture with Bunching Onions

Guest post written by Jennifer Roy, Maison Tucker House volunteer.

Have you ever opened your fridge door and wondered where your food came from?
Looked at your dinner plate and questioned how far did this food travel?
What was really involved with the growing and harvesting of the food I eat?

Well, collecting locally grown vegetables in your neighbourhood, visiting the garden from which your salad grew and meeting the very farmer who nurtured, from seed to table, your entire season of vegetables is very much a reality for shareholders of a Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) program.

Community Shared Agriculture is a mutually beneficial method of farming where community members support the farmer with the purchase of a share at the onset of the growing season. CSA farms generally apply organic growing principles, as stipulated by the Federal government, nurturing soil, producing tasty nutritious and locally grown food. As a CSA shareholder households and communities directly support ecologically sustainable agriculture in additional to local farmers.

The long term benefit of CSA farming is that farmers are able to distribute within a community who agree to share the risks along with the benefits. The community and shareholder keep agricultural land in use and local farming knowledge for future generations.

Shareholders receive a weekly vegetable box for the season, approximately 15 weeks of the year from the first harvest in July through to the end of the growing season in October. A weekly share includes but is not limited to a variety of delicious tomatoes, carrots, squash, herbs and root vegetables.

In the local Ottawa region Bunching Onions Community Shared Agriculture (BOCSA) program operates a small twenty share CSA at Tucker House in Rockland. Bunching Onions is not currently certified as Organic; however, there have not been any artificial fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides or fungicides used on the property in the last 5 years or used in our farming practices. Only clean and healthy fertilizers, such as mushroom compost, are used on the land.

As a BOCSA shareholder you will benefit from a weekly supply of highly nutritious, fresh and locally harvested vegetables, great recipes for the wonderful variety of vegetables and a monthly e-newsletter. You are welcome to visit Tucker House BOCSA garden, develop a relationship between your food, its origin and our farmers or even enjoy the opportunity to volunteer on the farm!

Bunching Onions Community Shared Agriculture has two conveniently located pick up sites in the Glebe and Rockland. For more information please contact:

Lindsay : 613 -446-2117 Ext 8
www.maisontuckerhouse.ca/bunching-onions/