Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Starting a CSA at the Workplace
Somebody brought up, it wasn't me, one of our other members, why don't we
do a CSA in the office. I thought it was a great idea, I never thought it would work.
I went to our office director and I said, we want to start a CSA in the office. He said,
"What's that?" It's where a farmer delivers vegetables to the office and then employees
get to take home their groceries from here. He said, "OK, that sounds cool." So, that's how it started.
Farm share Thursdays
are really important for Rabobankers here. Everyone is so enthusiastic about our program.
Some people have never had kale, and now they love it. In order to start the CSA we did
have to partner with the building and notify them so we could reserve the freight area
on a weekly basis. I had to work with our general services department to reserve that
and also to get the certificate of insurance from the farm to make sure it was vetted with
Brookfield, our management company of the building. We actually start setting up about
an hour before the program starts, and the farm calls us when they're ready and downstairs
in our loading dock. What we do is we notify our employees by email and we have them come,
we have our helpers who are set up a day in advance, come to the freight elevator, and
we send half of the group downstairs, half upstairs. Basically we do an assembly line,
human chain to get the boxes into the freight elevators. The building has been so supportive,
the guys already know, we have this going on every Thursday, and they help us get the
elevators loaded. And then we come upstairs, we have everyone ready up here waiting and
then they take the boxes out, they know what to do. Basically all the boxes have the produce
in it. The share owners have to empty out their boxes And we provided blue bags, our
Rabobank bags for them to empty out the produce into. Then they basically go on their way.
It seems like a long process but once the boxes are here, they're in and out and it's
great. We have a discussion board employees are able to log onto to upload recipes to.
So, I think this is a great way for a corporation or any company to get to know your employees
and to have people share ideas. To eat all the vegetables
every week, I being my lunch every day now. We've become such a great team together with
the CSA and I've met people from different departments I've never met, and it really
has helped my networking at the bank as well as get a little healthier.
Co-workers are speaking to each other as they're collecting their vegetables,
talking with each other, their learning the names of their colleagues, it's all very positive.
If there is any leftover produce or if people are on vacation and can't take their produce
we make sure that it goes to St. Bart's Food Kitchen here in NYC, and they're very happy
to take the vegetabes. One of the first things we did
is create our CSA logo. From there we started putting up posters. We set up 2 informational
meetings, with the same presentation on 2 different days. I think Katchkie came out
and brought food too on that day. That's how we got people to
come out to the meeting. We gave a presentation on what
it was, explained basic concept, presented the contract. And then from there, most of
our signing people up was on a one-on-one basis.
In the book, we basically have a to do list for setting up
cleaning up and a member list, and we check off every week that we pick up the veggies
so that the core group knows if there is a bag left, then who's it is. Every time we
get the share, we write down everything that's in it, so we really keep track of everything
that comes. And before I split my share, I take a photo. So every week we could see exactly
what we had. I always do a far away one and a close up so that we can also see in detail
how fresh the veggies are. Lauren Segal: Also, we kind of make people
volunteer even if they aren't really needed just to build that sense of community and
ownership of a CSA so that everybody has to pitch in in some way. So even if they can't
lift the heavy bags off the freight elevator, they can still get the book, and clean the
knives, everybody has to do something just because we are a community and that's part of it.
It's very convenient.
We are all very busy here. We work late a lot and to have the vegetables delivered,
to work, it's a very good thing.