The Artist Volunteers: Fair Shares
My travels continue - another week on the road, another week avoiding jobs and bills. I'm in St. Louis visiting family, and for the next week I'll be volunteering at Fair Shares - a combined CSA. Fair Shares is a food nonprofit owned and operated by my mother, Jamie, and my Aunt Sara. It's really an amazing concept, something completely unique. The basic idea is to create a community of people with a common interest in local food, sustainability, and social justice. The community is made up of both growers/producers (i.e. Farmers) and members of the CCSA. Each week members receive $50 worth of goods. They get a ton of locally grown produce and sustainably raised protein (grass fed/free range beef, pork, lamb, bison, chicken, and trout. Actually, I doubt that the trout is grass fed). They also get a weekly allotment of locally made commodities such as tortillas, honey, bread, maple syrup and freshly roasted coffee beans. The Fair Shares members get a great deal on locally grown consumables and the producers have a consistent buyer to supplement their sales at farmer's markets.
The social justice aspect comes in after the members have received their share of food. All the excess food, of which there is always some, goes to local food pantries. If you think of what usually goes to food pantries, pickled beets, creamed corn and the like, a box a fresh peaches is veritable a godsend.
Below, for your viewing pleasure, I have some pictures from the work site. I filled 90 bags with 44 pounds of locally grown Ozark Forest shitake mushrooms. It took a couple of hours because I had to weigh out 7.7oz of mushrooms into each bag. Tedious but fun.
Also, a perfect peach.
