I find it so interesting how even though we dive further and further into the future technologically every day, there are certain aspects of our lives where we are actually going backwards in time. The idea of knowing the farmer who raised the meat that you’re buying personally, being friends with your egg guy, and really having a full understanding of where everything you buy comes from, is going back to an old fashioned mentality. Production of food and goods was all local, it wasn’t an extra marketing selling point that allowed sellers to charge more for their product. It just was. Communities used to be a lot tighter because everyone relied on each other, and there was a lot more respect for people, things, the environment, because they were all a lot more intertwined.
Today if you ask people where their food comes from, more people will tell you a specific farm rather than 'the supermarket'. This love and appreciation for knowing where everything comes from has allowed the CSA culture to grow and flourish. We are moving further away from factory production and closer to local, small batch artisan production. We see this in our clothes, our candles, our furniture, and of course, it is shifting our food. 
What is a CSA, you may ask. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. CSAs allow you to buy a "share" of a farm. You are basically buying into a portion of the farm and in return, the farm will deliver your portion of produce. You typically pay for a whole season of goodies upfront (the prices range from $400 to $600 a season) and then weekly you will get your produce, whatever the farm has harvested that week. You can add meat, eggs, flowers to your share if you chose to do so.
CSAs are a fantastic way to connect to your community, and really help out local farms! They are also a really fun way to cook because you never know what the farm will give you, so your dishes will always be super spontaneous and of course the freshest of the fresh. They are also a lot more economical than shopping at a regular farmers market, because you pay upfront for a set amount of time for receiving food. There are some farms that actually deliver the produce to your door, so it's like an even better fresh direct. Fresh direct from the farmer's hands to yours. 
As a city person, it can be hard sometimes to get really good produce and stick with buying all local fresh items. Being part of a CSA not only makes your life easier, but it can really help a farmer out, it's like buying farm stock, and your return is the most delicious produce. I can't imagine anything better. Here is a CSA finder website for New York City! I encourage all of you to check it out! http://www.justfood.org/csaloc
