Your Backyard Farmer Transforms Yards into Organic CSAs, Part 1

Reader Contribution by John Clark Vincent

Planting A Future: Profiles from Oregon’s New Farm Movement spotlights 18 Oregon farms and farm supporters who are committed to a return to ecologically sound agricultural practices. This group reflects the diversity of people, both young and old, who are reshaping our state’s food system and reclaiming our right to eat well. In their stories you will hear how they came to be where they are, learn something about the challenges they face, and share their happiness at the successes they’ve enjoyed thus far. The following profile has been excerpted from Planting A Future.

“We showed up at a client’s home, and they had pulled every one of their pea plants out of the ground. So we asked them where the pea plants went, and they told us they were looking for peas. They thought they were in the roots, and we were like, holy cow, you don’t know what peas are? So we told them they should go to the grocery store and look at the produce and figure out what all these vegetables actually look like,” says Robyn Streeter.

“People don’t know these things, you know. They know what food looks like when you eat it… usually. They go to a restaurant and maybe they get this great Swiss chard dish, and they know what that looks like, but they don’t know what Swiss chard looks like in the dirt. So we realized that we needed to teach some more on that.”

Robyn isn’t making fun of her clients when she tells these stories, although she does laugh a lot while she’s doing the telling. It’s just her way of commenting on the fact that people today are disconnected from their food. Her business partner, Donna Smith, the more talkative half of this agricultural team, has even more stories.

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