Two Thursday mornings ago, at 9:50 am, I got a text from Mary Howland I’ve looked forward to all week: “Bags are ready for pickup 🥔” Mary works at Tracy Dempsey Originals, the bakery and wine shop where I pick up my weekly Sun Produce Co-Op farm bag. That week the goods were eggs, kale, lettuce, Big Jim chili peppers, red potatoes, and red radishes. This is a community-supported agriculture program (CSA) and six months in I can’t imagine my week without it.
Mary Howland at the counter
There are five farmers markets near me that I can name easily, but the closest one is still six miles away. My favorite is the Uptown Farmers Market but that’s a 13.7 mile drive which is too far to be a sustainable habit, both environmentally and logistically. For a period over the winter, I would load up my kids on Wednesdays to go to Uptown and we always had a great time, picking up produce, honey, bread, and lunch as well. But since the start of this year my life has expanded in complexity, primarily connected to my oldest two having more school work and activities in their lives. In February, I turned to a CSA as an easier way to consistently eat more seasonal and locally grown food.
This week’s bag
For twenty dollars a week, I get a bag of just picked fruit and vegetables (and sometimes eggs) sourced from a group of 49 local producers. Sun Produce Co-Op runs the CSA, which helps the producers sell more without needing people to come to them or meet them at a market. Especially in a sprawling area like Phoenix, I can only imagine that the logistics of markets can be nightmarish. Farmers must choose between markets, unless they have enough people to send to different ones, and weather the summer when they mostly shut down. Alternately, Sun Produce’s CSA runs year-round and has ten pick-up locations across metro Phoenix. In my city there are four locations, and two are under three miles from my house, a park and Tracy Dempsey Originals. I chose the spot with the wine because why not incentivize myself?
That fridge has pie and cheese inside it
Tracy Dempsey, who owns and runs the shop, is a local dessert legend and incredibly kind and unassuming in person. She often pops out to the front of the shop, apron-clad, to say hi. We’ve been talking about our Mill food recyclers, which we both recently got and are learning to use. I first found her shop years ago when she hosted a kitchen rummage sale benefitting Blue Watermelon Project, a local organization that focuses on rethinking food in schools. She stocks issues of Edible Phoenix and regional specialties like Ramona Farm’s tepary beans, and always has a moment to answer my question about a bottle of wine.
I regret not buying this bottle
TDO is close, but it’s not my nearest grocery store. Fry’s Food and Drug is .8 miles from my front door and I also shop there regularly. Fry’s is a division of Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the U.S., and boasts low prices and a single end aisle display of local foods. Recently, a gate was installed that everyone needs to walk through to enter the produce section, and from there the rest of the shopping. There are double the number of self-checkout kiosks than five years ago. I still recognize people who work there and we chat as they scan my items. My favorite, an older gentleman, has a habit of telling me my total is an exorbitant number. “And today it’s $1,967,” he’ll say with a flourish of the receipt. I always laugh. Sometimes I see he’s stationed at self-checkout, adrift among the kiosks, watching people fumble with scanning and bagging, waiting. No one talks there unless the machine gets angry and they turn, exasperated, looking for help. Speed and cheapness are the gods and chatting has fallen from grace.
Dried blueberries instead of fresh, my preference
But in a different universe, it’s Wednesday and I recieve my favorite text of the week:
So, is your money on rain or no rain in the next few days? Veggies this week include: Salad mix, Collard greens, Tomatoes, Summer squash, Chives. Pick up as usual, Thurs noon to 3 and Fri/Sat 10-3. I will let you know if bags are ready early Thursday.
Walking into TDO, Mary greets me and my children, if they’re with me, by name. She tells about the latest pastry in the case (this week it was the Meyer Lemon blueberry muffin) and when I ask her how long she’s worked there, the story is sweet, of course. She was a long time customer, she said, and after some trouble finding work Tracy said, “Mary, you should just work here!” I thank her for making my farm bag pick-ups a treasured event and head back out into the world, bolstered. It’s not as if I was there for hours on end with no sense of my to-do list or the clock. But even when I only have five minutes, that’s plenty of time for a good chat with Mary.
Have you ever been part of a CSA? Where do you chat and shop?
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Till next week
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The Good Enough Weekly comes out on Fridays with new writing about eating regionally, with a focus on climate and labor justice. Rooted in the Sonoran Desert.