community supported agriculture — Blog

Our first member spotlight is Tomtit Farm. The Tomtits, Brit and James, are located in Matangi, Hamilton and they are growing a beautiful array of produce, flowers, and healthy, happy soil! You can find out more about their offerings and how to support their work in their directory listing. They are also part of the Earthworkers programme and have recently been featured on a Farmers in the Field Episode where they talk about no-till techniques and cover cropping. Watch that here!

Tomtit Farm offers their produce through a CSA as well as a 24/7 road side fridge at the Front Paddock Cafe and they even offer delivery! Their CSA offerings include seasonal veges as well as add ons such as fresh baked bread, local eggs, and Last Jar preserves which features Tomtit Farm’s vegetables. It is so great to see the way they are connecting with and supporting other local food business, this is what building local food systems is all about!

Thanks Tomtits for supporting our work here at Village Agrarians, we love what you are doing up north and can’t wait to see what you get up to this season! We are very excited to have you as part of our community!

The Tomtits answered some questions from us about themselves, and shared with us a warming winter recipe featuring cauliflower! Learn more about them below:

How did you get into growing?

Hmmm good question, well I am a massive foodie and love anything that has to do with cooking and eating so I guess growing food is a nice compliment to this passion of mine. The growing journey started from finishing my studies in human nutrition and falling down a rabbit hole of academia where I was hungry for more impact at the community level where the idea of growing organic food came about. I quit my job and started volunteering at community gardens and wwoofing around NZ when the opportunity arose to have a go ourselves in the Waikato a few years ago now.

What's your current favorite plant/fruit/vegetable/flower etc to grow?

There are too many to choose from... coming into spring it would be rude not to mention the happiness dahlias and zinnias bring to our garden. Though this winter I have really enjoyed growing radicchio, the patterns and brightness they bring to the winter garden is amazing.

What do you like most about growing food for your community?

How we can inspire and provide the tools for our community to learn about seasonal produce that grow well for us here in the Waikato, we provide access to a huge variety of produce and exhibit climate mitigation focused growing. The kindness and joy we receive from our customers makes my day and the turn out we get at our community gardening workshops always blows me away.

Do you have offerings besides vegetables that you want to share?

We are just about to start our Spring Seasonal Harvest CSA in September, this is more than vegetables, this is a community between us the farmers, our members who enjoy our produce and the land that we grow the food on. We love offering the chance for our customers to stick with us for a whole season because we really get to know each other really well over this time and can really demonstrate seasonal produce and how it's produced. Our Seasonal Harvest Members become part of the Tomtit Farmily.

We are also growing flowers again this season and are bringing back the Tomtit Farm PYO flowers days.

Do you have a seasonal recipe you can share?

Yes this is one of my absolute winter favourites and it's so easy to whip up.

Whole roasted cauliflower with sesame flat bread, recipe below.

(you can find more amazing recipes from Tomtit Farm on their website)

My entry point into the world of organic, community focused agriculture was through the first CSA share I ever participated in. The CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture, is a popular model for small scale farms to get produce directly from the farm, to the people. I attended an information session at my university in Oregon where two local farmers came to introduce the idea of Community Supported Agriculture to students. The farmers had prepared some roasted parsnip snacks to share while discussing their commitment to organic principles, their history with farming, and the ways the CSA model benefits the whole community. We learned that by entering into a partnership and paying for a share of the harvest at the start of the season, the community invests in the farm and the farmer. This ensures the farmer has the necessary capital to invest in infrastructure, tools and seeds at the start of the season. In turn, the community receives a share of the harvest every week.

For me, the CSA was an entirely new idea. The invitation to participate in something different from the supermarket was exciting: the shiny promise of fresh vegetables would make every week feel special, and while the produce would be expected, the variety would be a surprise to look forward to. My friends and I faced just a couple of issues, one being that the share provided enough vegetables to feed a family, and the other, which felt like more of a barrier, was the commitment to paying up front for months worth of food.

Our desire to enter the community of the farm by becoming CSA members led us to form a small community in our household. If one share provides enough to feed a family, we could become a family, sharing food and cooking together. We talked to the farm about our financial situation as students, and luckily they allowed us to split the payments, making it possible for us to become part of the community for the season. And so began our adventure as a new CSA household. Each week we would wait eagerly for the email from our farmer (our farmer! It was so exciting to know her!) featuring a beautiful photo of greens, onions, tomatoes, as well as things I had never heard of, like kohlrabi and celeriac. We would go together to the car park across the street from campus where we picked up our vegetables every week. At home we tried new recipes, ate lots of salads, and turned many meals into potlucks.

Looking back, I know that the first season of joining a CSA catalyzed a change in my relationship with food and agriculture. I started thinking about things I had never considered before. I knew my farmer, Carrie, was getting paid a fair wage, but what about the people who grew the food for the supermarkets? What were their wages like? And all of those heads of broccoli and boxes of berries and perfect apples didn’t come from nowhere. Where were they grown? And how did they get to the shelf, lined up all uniform and shiny?

In Aotearoa, the majority of the food grown here is shipped overseas. The history of conventional farming as a colonial project to feed Britain shapes many practices and standards in conventional agriculture today. But Aotearoa has a longer history of organic and community farming than conventional agriculture. Maori horticulture and gardening traditions are far more productive, generative and able to sustainably feed communities than conventional methods. Luckily more people are recognizing and honoring this knowledge every year.

Our goal at Village Agrarians is to support as many people as possible to get involved in local, organic, and equitable food systems. Finding an entry point is essential, and for me, it was joining a CSA. As interest in local food systems grows, we are digging into questions of access, affordability and equity. We are asking questions like, what is the best way to support new growers who want an active role in feeding their community? How can the CSA model be affordable to everyone who wants to be involved? Is it possible for farmers to offer a sliding scale membership where members pay according to their ability? Maybe door delivery with an electric vehicle could help busy families get fresh vegetables, while also acting in a way that is mindful of climate change. In my eyes, we must support a change to sustainable and equitable agriculture with and for each other. We hope you will get involved too, because together we can shift far more than any one of us could alone.

By Naomi Morgan

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