Coming this summer is your chance to have a regular supply of fresh produce from Riverbend Gardens, a family-operated local Edmonton farm. Riverbend Gardens, which resides within city boundaries in Edmonton’s northeast corner, is currently accepting subscriptions to its Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. Subscribers have four options that allow them to choose the number of weeks they would like to receive produce and the amount of produce they would like to receive per week. Subscribers also select a pickup location from a list of five local organizations; produce will be delivered to these locations at noon every Thursday for people to pick up.
Just think! These delicious vegetables (pictured below) were grown right here on a local Edmonton farm and you can receive a weekly supply of goodies like these!
Riverbend Gardens is proud to be a local Edmonton farm that provides Edmontonians with fresh, seasonal, local produce. They bring their produce to local farmers’ markets but began their CSA in 2012 in order to make it even more convenient for Edmontonians to buy their produce.
For those unfamiliar with Community Supported Agriculture, it is a Canada-wide initiative that helps citizens become more invested (literally) in local produce. People agree to pay local farmer a fee up front, and in return, receive a regular supply of fresh, seasonal produce over the course of the growing season.
“I think the CSA is a GREAT way for people to connect to their local farms,” says Janelle, owner of Riverbend Gardens. “It teaches people about the seasonality of food and what grows around them! And it helps support local small family farms in an economy that generally favors large scale industrial farming.”
In other words, CSAs benefit both local farms and local consumers. You can support a local Edmonton farm and reap the benefits by subscribing to Riverbend Gardens’ CSA!
For more information about Riverbend Gardens and to subscribe to their CSA, you can go to their website at www.riverbendgardens.ca.
For more information on CSAs in general, check out the David Suzuki Foundation’s page on CSAs.
If you’d like to discover other CSA’s in Alberta you go to: http://www.csaalberta.com/
If you’re interested in learning more about living locally in Edmonton, check out our “10 Paths to Localism” article.