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TIL: CSA History

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The following is a copy of an article originally published in 1995 in In Context #42, “A Good Harvest”, copyright 1995 by Context Institute. Here is a link to their web version. I am reposting the text here because things have a way of getting lost on the Internet, and at least some search engines appear to no longer even connect to the original version. Though I have worked for several CSAs and now run a CSA I had never heard of this work until now. The following is a copy of the text at the above original link. I will of course remove it if the copyright owners ask.

The author, Robyn Van En, is credited with creating the first CSA in the United States, at Indian Line Farm in Massachusetts.

Eating for Your Community

A report from the founder of community supported agriculture

By Robyn Van En

One of the articles in A Good Harvest (IC#42)
Originally published in Fall 1995 on page 29
Copyright (c)1995, 1997 by Context Institute

The origin of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) concept, the partnership between consumers and farmers, can be traced to Japan in the mid-1960s. Homemakers began noticing an increase in imported foods, the consistent loss of farmland to development, and the migration of farmers to the cities.

In 1965, a group of women approached a local farm family with an idea to address these issues and provide their families with fresh fruits and vegetables. The farmers agreed to provide produce if multiple families made a commitment to support the farm. A contract was drawn and the "teikei" concept was born, which translated literally means partnership, but philosophically means "food with the farmer’s face on it." Clubs operating under the teikei concept in Japan today serve thousands of people sharing the harvest of hundreds of farmers.

The First CSA

This innovative idea did not come to the US until the mid-1980s. At that time, I was in my second season as owner of Indian Line Farm. Many small farmers across the country were struggling with the financial realities of market gardening. Several of us, with the CSA concept at the tip of our thinking, had no real model to crystallize the thought. "Subscription farming" – paying on a weekly/monthly basis – existed and experienced significant support and proliferation through Booker T. Whatley’s book, How to Make $100,000 Farming 25 Acres (Rodale, 1987). However, it did not address limited financial resources at the beginning of the growing season or the question of community support.

Then, in summer of 1985, Jan Van Tuin came to Indian Line Farm fresh with the experience of helping organize a Swiss version of the Japanese Teikei clubs. He and I talked briefly and decided that the Swiss experience was perfect to apply at Indian Line Farm. We attracted a core group of organizers and after many long discussions, dubbed the proposed endeavor "Community Supported Agriculture," and introduced the concept to the Great Barrington community that Fall. We offered shares of some of the local apple harvest, and members received storage apples and jugs of cider each week. Most of the families from the apple project bought shares in the vegetable harvest for the following season.

Today, there are at least 500 active examples of this original US initiative throughout North America. Each year, the number of CSA farms and participating members increases dramatically. Though there are variations on the basic theme, most successful CSA projects begin with a central group of consumers and producers who draw up a budget which reflects yearly production costs.

The budget includes all salaries of the farmer/gardener, distribution and administration costs, plus costs of seeds, soil amendments, small equipment, etc. The resulting figure is divided by the number of shares that the farm/garden site can produce for; this determines the costs of a "share" of the harvest. A share is designed to feed 2-4 people with a mixed diet or 1-2 vegetarians by providing all of their vegetable needs for one week. Larger households and restaurants buy multiple shares. The consumer group of sharers agree to pay their share of production costs and also share the financial risk with the producers. In return, the sharers receive a bag of local, same-day-fresh, typically organic vegetables and herbs once a week all summer, and once a month all winter (East of the Rockies), if a root cellar or cold storage unit is available. Projects typically provide at least 40 different crops, and Indian Line Farm was able to feed 300 people 43 weeks of the year from five acres of land.

Incentive to Farm

We are still in the pioneer stage of introducing and adapting CSA to North America – home to the cheapest food in the world. Few CSA farmers are turning a profit, but they are covering all or most of their production costs, including a guaranteed salary. As our video states, "It’s not just about vegetables;" most CSA growers are in it for the long haul. The evolving community relationship of CSA actually gives incentive and means to continue farming or to enter the field (no pun intended), with the highest standard of land stewardship practices.

The CSA system also gives farmers financial credibility; I know that the CSA guaranteed income helped me get my farm mortgage. When lenders see that people are willing to take this risk with farmers, they begin to take more risks and try alternatives.

The annual commitment and relationship with the members also affects our ability to cope with unexpected setbacks. After a rainstorm dumped eight inches of rain in three hours, the winter baking squash had to be picked prematurely. Everybody froze, dried, and ate as much as they could, but it was basically a $35 loss to each share. That would have been a $3500 loss to an individual farmer.

People usually join a CSA project for fresh, ripe, and local foods (most store-bought vegetables are picked green and ripen in transit to the store shelf). With access to a farm, many are dazzled by the bounty and wonders of nature. I love to see grown people awed by the delicate beauty of a carrot seedling. People start eating vegetables they never liked before because they had never tasted them vine-ripened and chemical-free.

CSA members are supporting a regional food system, securing the agricultural integrity of their region, and participating in a community-building experience by getting to know their neighbors and who grows their food.

CSA also helps bridge socio-economic gaps. Intelligence and knowing you like good, fresh food has nothing to do with money, status, or where you live. Members range from people who use food stamps to those who pay extra to have their vegetables delivered. Together they guarantee that local farmers survive and ensure that their children and grandchildren can eat from the same farm.

Community Supported Auto Mechanics

Because the CSA concept is about building community, the logical evolution is to community support of almost any cottage industry. Members would pay for a tune-up and oil change at the beginning of the year. This "cash advance" allows the mechanic to pay for the new lift they otherwise wouldn’t have money to buy. This kind of community trust-building takes relationships to a whole new level. That’s why agribusinesses will not be able to co-opt the CSA concept. They just can’t put the heartbeat into it.

One of the most exciting outgrowths of the CSA movement has been the formation of CSA coalitions – where farmers get together to share growing techniques, crops, and equipment. Because of their guaranteed incomes, CSA farmers are immune to the "bigger is better," "mine is better" syndrome and are instead focused on finding new ways to cooperate with their neighbors and with Mother Nature.

CSA is also a vehicle for transition away from using chemical fertilizers. The opportunity for education and dialogue CSA creates between food producers and food eaters creates options toward low/no chemical input. Money out-front allows farmers to do the best job they can by the way of the land, the customer, and themselves.

As we go full circle, I have had the pleasure of co-hosting a group of Japanese teikei organizers and of networking with Swiss visitors, sharing with them information on CSA projects in their own countries. I routinely get requests for my publication, A Basic Formula to Create Community Supported Agriculture, from some 25 other countries around the world. Same solutions, one world.

Robyn Van En, co-founded CSA in the US in 1985. She is the director of CSA North America. For CSA contacts, please refer to the Resource section in this issue.

Day-Range (Free Range) Broiler Chickens [edited: updates]

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Due to a series of losses to predation despite our best efforts using the old pastured-poultry style system, we have made the switch to a free range system in which the chickens are fed outside the coops and go outside to forage during the day, and are locked safely inside the coops at night. While we expect to lose some birds to hawks and other daytime predators while the birds are outside, they at least have a chance of running away. The chief problem with having the chickens inside the coops was that if a predator manages to get inside then the chickens have nowhere to run. In addition, there is a built-in security flaw in the mobile coops, because they cannot have a floors in them which would prevent the chickens from foraging. In our system and with our topography it was not possible to keep predators from tunneling under the walls of the coop and getting inside.

In our day-range system the coops are now entirely covered in half-inch hardware cloth, including floors. [Covered floors proved too difficult to move through the grass, so we took them out and switched to running an electric strand around the base of the coop at night.] However, since the chickens are only kept inside the coops at night when they are asleep, it doesn’t matter that they can’t forage through the floor. [Still true, but we removed the floors for other reasons.] They go outside all day and forage in a much larger area which is protected by a temporary electric fence perimeter. We still move the coops regularly to spread out the manure deposit and to give the chickens access to new ground and we move the entire ensemble including the electric perimeter every week or two. So-called “free range” systems which do not move the chickens end up destroying all the available forage in the area. We make sure to move ours so that doesn’t happen.

For the farmer, managing this system takes about as much time as a standard pastured-poultry system in which broilers are kept inside mobile coops which are moved daily or more. In our day-range system each move takes more time and effort. The mobile coops are now heavier, must be moved farther, outdoor feeders and waterers must also be moved, and periodically the electric perimeter fence must be moved as well. However because the chickens are able to free range, when they are younger and don’t eat as much we can move them every few days instead of daily, so on average it is the same amount of time per day. Also, when using the old system we were spending a significant amount of extra time attempting to keep predators from tunneling under the coops — ultimately without success.

For now, this free range / day range system seems to be working well. We’ll provide an update after we have seen it in action for another season.

Our Pricing Policy

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A Revolution, A Margin, But Not A Marginal Revolution

(It’s an economics joke.)

We have a target margin that we try to make on each sale. We don't yet, usually, but we're working on it. At our target production capacity, above which we would need to invest in more land and infrastructure, this margin would provide our family with an income somewhere above the poverty line and well below the state median. At our current scale we make much, much less than minimum wage. We have extra capacity and are always looking to add new customers, but scaling up production is a multi-year process.

If there's no chance of making our margin, we won't make that sale. That’s why we don’t really focus on selling eggs, for example. We have some layer hens for other reasons and we charge supermarket prices for their pasture-raised eggs, even though theirs aren’t and ours are better. We would have to charge much more than that to make it worthwhile to make egg sales into an actual farm business. So we don’t.

Above our target margin, we would prefer instead to increase our production and the number of families we feed, rather than collect a slightly higher profit margin. Thus, we pay absolutely no attention to market supply and demand when setting our prices. We only pay attention to the supply of our product: ribs are more expensive because there are a limited number per animal; ground meat is less expensive because you can grind pretty much anything you want to. We would love to be able to increase quality and lower our prices. That doesn't seem likely in the near future, but if our costs do come down at some point in the future, we will happily pass that on to you. Our business model is a sustainable farm business, which means we prefer to cultivate long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with our customers. We don’t want customers who are looking for “a deal” and likewise we have no interest in taking advantage of our customers to make a quick extra few dollars. We want to make a fair living by charging a fair price for really good food, and we want your grandchildren to be buying really good food for a fair price from our grandchildren.

Fair Pricing


So what’s a fair price? We do not believe that locally-produced, real, good food needs to be or ought to be a luxury item. Unfortunately, the structure of the modern economy means that it is for a lot of people., and we can’t really do anything about half a century of collusion to produce artificially low working wages. At least, not by ourselves.

On the other hand, the reason why food is so bad and unhealthy and ecological destruction is so omnipresent is a collective unwillingness by people who could afford to do so to pay for anything better. So we do think prices are “fair” which truly are affordable for most people, even if they are substantially higher than what is found at the “super” market. According to historical data provided by the USDA ERS, 60 years ago Americans spent 17.5 percent of after-tax income on food. Today it is much, much lower, and much more of it is “take out”. Already at that time people were getting more and more processed food from a “super” market rather than real food from a real farmer, but it’s a good start at least.

It seems fair to expect that people who care about the food they eat and who want to eat good food affordably will spend 17.5 percent of income on food, and save money by cooking at home except for special occasions. Median household after-tax income in our county is about $50,000. The share of that spent on food, at 17.5 percent, would be about $8,750. If you care about getting the most for your food dollar, it’s reasonable to spend 60 percent or more of this on meat. See this post for a discussion of why spending more on meat is the best choice. That provides a budget of $5,250 to spend on meat. Perhaps a family of four eats 10 pounds of meat a week. That’s less than is “consumed” according to government data, but meat “consumption” includes a lot of waste, because people are more willing to throw out cheap food if they don’t feel like eating or cooking it. The family thus needs to buy 520 pounds of meat in a year. Therefore, their budget permits them to pay about $10.10 cents per pound for meat, on average.

That’s fair. Right? I am not saying that anyone ought to cut out streaming services, fancy vacations, new clothes, a new car, or anything else except essentials before spending less on food. I am, however, saying that if someone says they can’t afford good food but isn’t willing to forego any of those other luxuries, then their priorities are misguided and self-destructive.

If $10.10 is the cost of the meat/protein portion of a meal, probably serving two or more people since that is for a full pound of meat, and that is 60 percent of the meal cost, then the full cost would be something like $16.80. That is perhaps what you would pay for a single serving fast food meal, in which you get french fried potatoes (cheap), a cheap bread bun (cheap), a leaf of lettuce (garbage if not fresh from your garden or a real farmer), a slice of tomato (garbage if not fresh in season), a slice of pickle (easy and better to make at home), and a cup of diabetes or aspartame to drink, with ice. Oh, and about a quarter pound of “meat”. Seems like kind of a ripoff. You’re basically paying for the convenience of not having to cook, which most certainly is nice to have once in a while. Makes you wonder why fry cooks are so egregiously underpaid for what is clearly a service in very high demand.

We strive to keep our prices below that number. There is room to improve it: even in 1960, Americans were throwing out a lot of perfectly good livers, hearts, and so on. If you don’t throw out edible food, your budget goes farther. In addition, there are usually ways to save extra money, especially with pork. If you make your own bacon at home, or do without, you don’t have to pay the butcher for their work in curing bacon for you. You can make your own sausage as well. However, housing is much less affordable today, and that’s certainly as important a budget item as food to any family. Also, we don’t think you should have to make the median household income to eat good food, and while people ought to be willing to cut out a lot of extraneous expenses to save money before going without decent food, we do all have to pay bills and make ends meet. Therefore, we strive to keep the total cost (not just what you pay us) of our bulk orders below ten dollars. We always make sure that bulk orders are the most affordable way to purchase from us, because they require the most work from you (storage, planning in advance) and the least from us.

We (All) Get What We Pay For

On a macroeconomic scale, if more people pay a fair price for real food from real farms, this creates an opportunity for more people who enjoy the farming life to make a career out of it. Real farmers improve the productivity of their land, so over time yields will naturally increase and costs will go down. Coincidentally, if more people leave the general non-farm labor market to become farmers, that means more competition for non-farm workers which will incentivize increased wages and salaries.

In other words, we get, collectively, what we pay for. If people buy cheap, factory-farmed or -produced food, this means real farmers can’t afford to keep their farms. It means businesses you don’t like make more money, which means they have no reason to incentivize more productive employees with better pay. This puts downward pressure on wages and salaries which ultimately means you make less. If we pay a fair price to real farms producing real food, perhaps at the cost of limiting our consumption of some of the luxuries and comforts with which modern living is replete, then we will all end up making more real income while at the same time more real farm food is available to us at a lower cost.

Why is supermarket chicken so expensive?

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Math is fun!

What do concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) chickens eat?

Conventional CAFO chickens basically eat corn and soybean meal. (We hope. Sometimes they eat far worse things than that.)  Industry chickens gain a pound of carcass weight for every 1 4/5 pounds of feed.  So a 5 pound chicken in the chain supermarket ate around 9 pounds of feed.

How much does that feed cost?

Corn by the bushel is roughly 7 cents a pound on the open market and soybean meal is around 15 cents a pound.  (These prices fluctuate and I’m sure have changed since I first looked them up, but if anything, a major national chicken producer is going to have buying power and pay, if anything, less than the listed commodity prices.)

Soybean meal is about 45 percent protein and broiler chickens need around 20 percent protein in their feed mix (a bit more early on, a bit less when they are close to finished.)  So a 5 pound chicken will have eaten about 4 pounds of soybean meal and 5 pounds of corn.  The soybean meal provides 1 4/5 pounds of protein which is 20 percent of 9 pounds, and the rest of the feed is corn for added calories.

4 pounds of soybean meal X 15 cents a pound = 60 cents

5 pounds of corn X 7 cents a pound = 35 cents

A total of 95 cents.  That's total, not per pound.  95 cents to feed the chicken it's whole life.    

If you exclusively ate food costing less than 10 cents a pound, how healthy do you think you would be?

Let's be generous and triple that number for labor costs and depreciation of facilities and so on. Heck, let’s give all the workers a raise and say it’s a 4x multiple. That probably even covers trucking costs and shelf space at the supermarket, and you know what? You shouldn’t have to pay for that anyways. We all want truckers to be compensated for their service, but the fact that your chicken spent several days in shipping is of zero benefit to you, and you shouldn’t have to pay for it.

You're being ripped off

Why do they charge you $1.25 per pound for chicken in the supermarket?  That's $6.25 for a chicken that costs at most $3.80 to raise, process, and wrap it in plastic.  Well, they do it because they can.  They can get you to pay double their cost.

Why is that?  Does factory-farmed supermarket chicken have a robust and unique flavor that you find especially delicious?  Do you relish trips down the meat aisle in the supermarket, feeling the cold air from the display case as you check the sell by dates on the packages?  How old is that stuff, anyways? Do you enjoy thinking about groundwater contamination and algae blooms from tons (literally) of chicken manure runoff?  Have you ever thought, "Hey honey, let's take the kids out to see the factory chickens this weekend. Pack the breathing masks so we don’t inhale an unsafe amount of aerosolized chicken poop."   

Get what you pay for

Pasture-raised chickens cost a lot more to raise than factory-farmed poultry.  They eat a far more varied and healthy diet, but they also eat more - a lot more.  And managing chickens on pasture is a lot of work.  Many small farmers raising pastured poultry are lucky if we make minimum wage on our time and effort.  Even with a very small margin, good pasture-raised chicken does cost more.

But then, if you're buying factory-farmed chicken, you're not even getting what you pay for.    

How to eat well on a budget (updated)

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A lot of people express an interest in eating great-tasting, healthy, real food but don’t think they can afford to do so while paying bills, paying off debt, and maybe trying to save to buy a home or start a family. Or living on a fixed pension or even just social security. Here are some recommendations for how to eat well on a budget.

Cook your own food

The first thing to do is cook your own food. Home-cooked food is healthier, cheaper, and unless you have the money to go to fancy restaurants all the time, tastes better. Anyone can cook: get a slow cooker / crock pot. Either it heats up or it doesn’t; you don’t need to spend a lot of money. Put everything in the pot the night before, stick it in the fridge, and remind yourself to take it out and plug it in before you go to work. Come home to a hot, home-cooked meal. When in doubt, add liquid: you really can’t overcook stew. With all the money you save not getting fast food and take-out, treat yourself to a nice local restaurant every once in a while.

If possible, buy a chest freezer

A chest freezer is cheaper than an upright for the size. You can buy something used that has dings and dents in it for much less than the retail price. Tell the seller you want them to plug in the freezer before you come over. If you get there and it’s cold, it works. You’ll need a spot to plug it in and to be sure you don’t overload the circuit, but even in a 1BR apartment there may be a spot you can put a small chest freezer. Keep in mind that if you use the chest freezer for long-term storage you only need to get into it every week or so. The rest of the time, put a nice cloth over it and it’s a side table.

Spend your money on good meat (no really, we mean it)

Your best “bang for your buck” (though that would be another way to get good, healthy meat*) is to spend money on good, healthy meat. There are three major reasons why this is the case.

  1. Raising meat animals “naturally” is different from gardening. There are no days off. Forgetting to water your carrots is quite different from forgetting to give a pig water. For most people, paying a farmer to do the work for you is the best choice.

  2. Any harmful chemicals in plants are going to get concentrated in the meat of animals that eat those plants. It’s relatively common for CAFO animals to have damaged livers, which means their livers aren’t able to filter out all the toxins they ingest. So if you want to avoid toxins in your food, the most concentrated source of toxins is likely the meat you eat. Spending your money on decent meat is the best way to avoid ingesting those poisons. Buying expensive organic produce but eating cheap, “factory-farmed” meat is more than a little foolish.

  3. Plant-based diets are trash food. Vegan diets are far worse for the environment and for your health. (A possible exception would be something like rastafarian “ital” cooking, which is very different from eating mass produced veggie “burgers”. If you are an actual rastafarian reading this, please comment.)

Buy in bulk

Half hog, quarter beef, whole lamb, bulk chicken. You’ll save a lot with a bulk discount when you buy direct from a local farmer.

This is what the chest freezer is for. If you absolutely do not have room for a chest freezer, start your own buying club. Get a group together, pool your funds, and buy in bulk together. Then split the meat among yourselves. When in doubt, ground beef and bulk sausage in one pound packages are easy to split among any number of households.

Another way you save money when buying meat in bulk is by making use of the whole animal. Save the bones and make your own bone broth: all this takes is heat, water, bones, and time. Use the extra bits and pieces to flavor or bulk up soups or vegetable dishes. A handful of chopped ham ends adds a lot of flavor to a pot of beans. Organ meats can be especially healthy, cheap, and versatile. Add some beef heart to your meatballs or meatloaf.

What about fruits and vegetables?

DO NOT BUY “ORGANIC”. Not from a supermarket, anyways. Trust your farmer, not a label.

“Organic” fruits and vegetables are not typically field tested, which means it is extremely easy to cheat the system. There are plenty of news story examples of major fraud in big ag “organic” food. Furthermore, organic farming at scale is normally highly intensive row cropping with multiple tillage passes per year, which is just strip-mining top soil resulting in very low nutrient density produce. You probably don’t even know what the “organic” label actually means. Does anyone, other than the industry lobbyists who write the regulations? You know what billions of advertising dollars are spent to make you think “organic” means. Why pay extra for a marketing scam? If you must buy at a grocery store, just get what looks good for the best price. But the better option is to buy from a local farmer you know, who is farming in a way that adds nutrients to the soil and thus to the produce you buy. (And if they say they are organic farmers, that’s a bit different from something with an “organic” label at a big chain grocery store.)

Shop local — and at the farm.

Farmers markets are fun and that is mostly what they are for. If you want to eat well on a budget, don’t buy a bag full of produce at the market. Instead, ask the farmer what their price is if you bring a vehicle out to the farm and fill up the trunk with food. Tell them you want to freeze or can a year’s supply of whatever is in season.

Buy in season, and ask for "seconds”. Farms have produce that they don’t bother to bring to market simply because it looks a little strange. It’s going to be just as tasty and nutritious as anything else, but most shoppers want to buy produce that looks like it’s “supposed” to, and there’s only so much room in the farm truck. Chances are you can find a local farmer who will gladly sell you their seconds at a nice discount. You could even ask if you can harvest from beds they’re going to turn under at the end of the season.

Once you have your gigantic box full of gnarly-looking-but-tasty apples or whatever, preserve them! Try out water-bath canning (don’t get botulism, use an approved recipe.) Or just cut them up, blanch them, and freeze them in your chest freezer.

Grow your own

Even if you live in a tiny 1BR apartment, you can grow pretty much all the salad mix you could ever want. Get two of those large plastic storage containers — the kind for storing clothes or tools. Put a few rocks inside one. Poke or drill holes in the bottom of the other. Stack. Fill the top container (the one with holes) with potting soil. Put it next to a window. (If you don’t have a convenient window, use grow lights.) Plant seeds, fertilize, and water appropriately. You can grow a lot of lettuce mix this way. If you cut the greens a couple inches off the soil, so the stems and parts of the leaves remain, they will grow back and you can keep coming back and harvesting over and over.

You can do a lot with container gardening like this. Salad mix of course. Radishes. Tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs of all kinds. Lemon trees. Plant things that benefit greatly from freshness (like salad mix) or that you like but are expensive to buy (like heirloom tomatoes). Don’t worry about experimenting. A single packet of seeds is cheap, and you can re-use the dirt and container if those seeds don’t grow. Try out companion planting to get more use out of your containers. And don’t stretch your pennies to buy the most expensive “organic” fertilizer when you’re just starting out. Sure, good organic compost is better than the NPK chemical junk on sale at your local garden center. But you’re already so far ahead of store-bought stuff by growing your own fresh, home-grown food, that buying cheap chemical fertilizer isn’t going to ruin it. Try out composting and making your own organic fertilizer — later on, once you’ve had some gardening success.

Save money on staples and don’t feel guilty

Basic, conventional rice. Dry beans. Oats. Staples that you can use to round out any meal. You may want to buy organic wheat flour (yes, this is an exception) because conventional wheat (along with other storage crops) is often sprayed with dessicant herbicides to facilitate an easy and uniform harvest. Your “organic” wheat may or may not be all that “organic”, but at least you won’t be eating something that was sprayed with an herbicide right before harvest time. (Could this widespread use of herbicides be contributing to the historically unprecedented explosion in “gluten” allergies? Not according to the corporate foundations that fund medical science!)

True…if you care about resource depletion and poisons going into the environment you probably don’t really want to think too much about how this stuff is grown and made. You know what? When you’ve saved up some money and you’re not living paycheck-to-paycheck, it would be awesome if you would help do something about that. Until then, we need you healthy and not broke. So buy the absurdly cheap corporate mass-produced flour and don’t feel guilty about it. Heck, buy the absurdly cheap sack of conventional oranges from a thousand miles away. You’re already getting great nutrition from a lot of local, naturally-farmed meat and vegetables and fruits. You’re not a bad person for buying a banana. (Bananas used to fund a lot of drugs and human trafficking, but that’s largely ended. Just don’t buy avocados unless they’re grown in the USA.)

* It’s a venison joke.

Beans and Rice with Smoked Ham Hock

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Dry beans*

Smoked ham hock

Salt

Onion

Celery

Tomato paste

Paprika, Garlic powder, cumin, oregano, sage (or whatever you like)

Lard

A big heavy pot for beans

Rice

A rice-cooking vessel

Soak the dry beans in lots of (optionally, salted) water overnight. *I’m not a big fan of kidney beans, undercooked beans are pretty bad for you and kidney beans seem to take forever to cook. We tend to use small red beans or adzuki beans, which are a different genus but who cares, they look like beans and they taste like beans and they’re called beans, so they’re beans. You could use black beans or pinto beans or any kind of beans, even kidney beans if that’s your thing. Lighter-colored beans cooked with smoked ham hock are going to end up looking kind of dirty, which you may prefer to avoid or maybe you like the grunge look, I’m not judging you for that. Much.

Amounts depend on how much you want. A pound of beans will make a filling family dinner plus leftovers which you can freeze for later. For that amount of beans, probably around 1 large onion and half a bunch of celery would be good, but you could certainly add more onion and celery if you like.

Strain the beans and discard the soaking water.

Dice the onion and celery and sautee them in some homemade cooking lard. A lot of recipes call for bell pepper. Bell pepper is a height-of-summer vegetable. Beans and rice is a cold weather dish for us. We usually have some onions around and we usually have some celery in the garden. Perhaps in the Deep South bell peppers grow in winter, but I don’t think you can grow bell pepper in a Willamette Valley winter, so it doesn’t belong in the dish. Cook with what’s in season. (Canned pickled peppers are a great accompaniment to beans and rice, but unless they’ve been kept crisp which is hard to do, they’re probably best added at the table.)

Add some tomato paste for color and flavor, a few tablespoons is good. If I open one of those six ounce cans of tomato paste I’ll just use the whole thing rather than have a partial can sitting around waiting to be used.

Add the beans and water to cover them by at least an inch, then stir everything well to incorporate the tomato paste without burning it. Add in your smoked ham hocks. One hock is fine for flavor, but there is actually some meat on most smoked ham hocks, so you may want to use more than one and pull off that smoky ham hock meat at the end to mix into the final dish.

Stir in the spices. Paprika is a good idea, at least you can get some kind of red bell pepper flavor compounds this way. Garlic powder would also be good (when is garlic ever bad in a savory dish?) Other spices it depends what you like. We have several sage plants in the garden that seem to always have some leaves, and I’m testing a theory that if you want your kids to eat something, use pizza herbs (oregano).

Bring everything to a boil, then turn the heat down and simmer until the beans are soft and the ham hock is falling apart. If the water is evaporating too quickly, cover the pot, and you may have to top it up with some boiling water. The goal at the end is to not have bean soup but to have a creamy dish in which the bean starches have cooked out into the liquid. When it’s finished, remove the ham hocks and pull off any bits of meat left on them to add to the pot.

If the beans are getting soft and the mixture is too liquid, leave the lid off and turn up the heat a bit, then stir with a wooden spoon making sure to scrape the bottom and try to mash some of the beans against the side of the pot. As you stir and break up the beans their starch will thicken it.

The problem with making these in a slow cooker is that you can’t boil off extra liquid to thicken it, and slow cookers even on high heat probably aren’t quite hot enough to cook the beans thoroughly without taking a really, really long time. Making it in a heavy pot on the stove is probably best.

The beans probably won’t need extra salt after being cooked with smoky, salted ham hocks. Stir in a little ketchup or molasses or brown sugar and a splash of apple cider vinegar.

It’s probably a crime somewhere not to serve these with some kind of rice, cooked however you cook rice. Quinoa would be a lower-glycemic option, though I don’t know if eating lots of quinoa is better than eating just a little rice.

I think beans and rice needs to be eaten with lots of accompaniments so everyone can personalize their dish. Hot sauce, pickled peppers, fresh parsley or cilantro, celery leaves, fresh green onion, grated cheese, diced raw onion, sour cream, diced raw celery, crunchy bean sprouts…or whatever else you like to mix in.