Here are some basics to get your started: For over 30 years, consumers have been actively supporting local farmers by purchasing shares of a farm and in return receiving local, seasonal food directly from the farmer. Typically a share consists of a box of fruits and vegetables but can also include a wide variety of other farm products including meat, cheese, flowers or honey. Quantity and diversity often depends on seasonality and change from farm to farm. No two CSA farms are going to be exactly alike so make sure you address the needs that are most important to you and your family. Usually CSAs will offer a variety of options to meet your needs. CSA farms generally deliver their products weekly to a convenient meeting point and some will even deliver to your home. If you are eligible for SNAP benefits, the Oregon SNAP CSA website, created by Zenger Farm, can connect people with SNAP benefits to Community Supported Agriculture. Farms across Oregon that accept SNAP benefits as payment for a CSA share are listed. Zenger Farm is also conducting workshops for farmers to encourage more CSAs to accept SNAP.

The benefits of joining a CSA are numerous. Supporting local agriculture offers us the healthiest and freshest produce available. Exposure to new fruits and vegetables often leads to new favorites and cooking experiments. After visiting a farm, children will often enjoy a wider variety of foods they would never eat before. And we as consumers are given the opportunity to form relationships with local farmers and learn more about how our food is grown.

Benefits for farmers are equally important. Many farmers do not have time or funding to market their products. By creating a CSA program, local communities are able to support farmers in advance of the harvest and farmers can spend their time in the field. Farmers also have the opportunity to meet the people who eat the food they grow.

So how do you find the best CSA for you? Here are a few places to get started.
Portland Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition (PACSAC)
Local Harvest
Oregon SNAP CSA

By Sarah Mooney

I have eaten truffles several times this fall. They are served at restaurants all over Piemonte, shaved over pasta, whipped with soft eggs, and even sliced into pumpkin soup.

I love the earthy and nutty flavors that they add to food and I was determined to find and dig one out of the dirt. I heard stories of old guys and their dogs hiking through the woods at dawn to search for buried truffles, and now I was ready to find a truffle of my very own.

My roomie and I met Giuseppe, a local hunter, at Alba’s Medieval Food Fair and we set the date. We arranged to meet the hunters in the village of Valle Talloria. Waiting for us on the tailgate of an antique Fiat 500 were two men wearing tan hunting clothes and green rubber boots. Next to the guys stood Luna, a little white Lagotto Romagnolo bred for truffle hunting. She had a shiny black nose and her once-white paws were caked with brown mud. Her tail was wagging energetically. We followed the old Fiat into the dark woods and parked along the side of a leafless hazelnut grove.

At 6:30 pm this November evening it was already dark. We grabbed flashlights and headed into the woods. Giuseppe was the actual hunter, while his friend Giacomo followed to make sure we didn’t get lost. When we reached somewhere around 300 meters in elevation Giuseppe began to speak to Luna in the Piemontese dialect, and at the sound of his voice she went nuts searching for truffles. He spoke quickly and excitedly to the dog and she scampered around the area with her nose to the ground. Moments later Luna came back, expecting a biscuit and a scratch behind her ears. Giuseppe said if she didn’t smell any truffles, she would quickly come back to him for the treats. He also mentioned he’d been feeding truffles to Luna since she was a puppy and she was a big fan.

Giuseppe continued this exchange of biscuits for her searching through the woods. We reached a small oak grove and he again spoke to Luna in Piemontese. She made her usual lap around the area and suddenly we heard a whimper as fallen leaves began to fly into the air. Giuseppe shouted “Hurray, my beautiful girl, Hurray!” and ran towards her.

Luna’s tiny paws franticly tore into the earth and Giuseppe skidded to a stop next to the dog. He began to speak calmly and gave her a hug. The hug was genuinely loving, but it also stopped Luna from digging into the truffles and tearing them apart. Excitement filled the air—as did the intense smell of truffly earth—and we gathered around the hunters, pointing our flashlights towards small hole in the ground. As Giuseppe excavated the truffle he constantly praised Luna for her find. He used a few small tools to dig out the truffle and at the same time tossed biscuits off to the side, distracting Luna from gobbling her find.

Within a few minutes we had a perfumed black truffle in our hands. This happened three times during the hunt. Luna found two black truffles and then she found one elusive white. She was even more thrilled when she discovered the noticeably more fragrant white truffle; as was I, since it was my turn to pull the truffle from the earth. I tossed a biscuit to Luna and stuck my pick into the ground, digging out my very own 25-gram white truffle. Earlier, when we were initially driving towards the woods, I wondered how the team would keep their truffle spot a secret, but after hunting I realized there was no way we could find anything without the help of Luna and Giuseppe.

Last night I ate a chestnut soup layered with Brussels sprouts and topped with truffles. I thought about Giuseppe and Luna and smiled as I ate. I now have a truffle hunt under my belt and yet another Piemontese experience checked off my list.

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Jess Pierce is currently a student at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy. Previously, she the General Manager and Sommelier at Ned Ludd, an American Craft Kitchen in PDX. She also worked at Brooks Winery in Amity for the 2010 & 2011 harvests. Jess plans to return to Portland, eventually.

Food is not a privilege of the few; it is a fundamental right of every person on earth. This statement was repeated over and over during the opening ceremony of Terra Madre.  As I watched hundreds of thousands of people converge on Torino, a town roughly the same size as my hometown of Portland, Oregon, this could not have been more clearly demonstrated. I observed men and women in native attire looking exhausted from long journeys, carrying precious resources from their countries in rolling suitcases and boxes labeled fragile, to share with the rest of the world. We have come from the four corners with great hope and quiet pride, brilliant solutions and powerful questions. How do we feed the world’s growing population with good healthy foods, grown safely by people who are appreciated and respected as leaders of tradition and knowledge? Where else could Afghanistan, Cuba, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Russia, China, Iran, Bosnia, the US, among a hundred others, gather to solve a world-wide crisis? Leaving political leaders and massive corporations at home, we gather together as students, farmers, producers, and educators to reclaim our connection with the one thing that can sustain our future generations; the Earth.

With my university pass I was permitted to explore the conference the day before it opened to the public. I spoke with a date producer from Libya, a pepper farmer from Malaysia and a Slowfood educator from Nova Scotia. I entered a place I had only seen in videos and read about in books. This was my Burning Man and my Woodstock combined. There is nothing I have wanted to be part of more than this conference, surrounded by people from around the world who share in my passion for food.

The next day I returned to find that people had been tirelessly working all night to prepare for thousands of visitors. The energy in the Terra Madre Pavilion was unmistakable. Muslim communities shared their mint tea with the countries nearby while the Filipino booth celebrated with impromptu dancing and singing as they introduced curious onlookers to exquisitely prepared meals. I was offered a small kernel of spice that made my tongue feel like a million centipedes were walking across its surface and a chocolate from Brazil that naturally tasted as if it were made with lemons and oranges. I am torn between my love for Hungarian curly haired pig salami and the smoked butter from France. Between tastings, I participated in conferences to learn about seed saving logistics from Vandana Shiva, how to develop my own local Earth Market and how the Dutch Slow Food Youth Movement is transforming the EU Common Agricultural Policy. Late in the evening, I danced and sang with Carlo Petrini at the UNISG booth.

“The earth is our north star and the paper in which we write our story”, Vandana Shiva so eloquently stated during the opening ceremony. This could not have been more comprehensibly demonstrated than through this year’s Terra Madre and Salone del Gusto conference. The gathered network of farmers, educators, artisans, activists and consumers with a passion for good, clean and fair food practice has the ability to change how we feed the earth’s population. We are part of a powerful global movement with the influence to make real changes. By Monday, exhausted and inspired, people returned home with markedly less of their indigenous products, replaced by gifts from new friends and carrying a explicit knowledge of this community that will continue to fight for what they know is the fundamental right of every person on this earth.

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A native of the Pacific Northwest, Sarah Mooney is a Master Candidate at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy.