Hardwear Sessions

Contents of typical food box

By Victor Ichioka

With books like The Omnivore's Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle making it onto the best-seller lists these days, it appears that Americans are taking an active interest in the origins of the food they eat. At Mountain Hardwear, this interest has taken the form of buying food directly from a local farm.

In September of 2007, our Product Manager for backpacks, Erik, floated the idea of forming a group-buying club for purchasing food directly from a farmer. His research showed that there were a number of farms in our area that were already set up to handle such arrangements. These programs fall under the heading of community supported agriculture. Fourteen people quickly signed up, and, starting in October, weekly deliveries to our offices began. Now, every Wednesday a truck arrives from Riverdog Farm with boxes of fresh produce. Subscribers to the service pick up their boxes at our company dining room. The mix of crops in the boxes varies with the season. A recent box contained a bag of oranges, a bag of bell peppers, a bag of salad greens, a large cabbage, a bunch of leeks, and some beets. A typical summer box might contain eggplant, tomatoes, melon, summer squash, garlic, basil, onions, cucumbers, corn, and peaches, nectarines, or plums. Although there is no choice about what crops people receive, recipients sometimes trade among themselves so that they more or less end up with the foods they prefer. The farm includes recipes for preparing some of the veges in the box. The whole thing costs sixteen dollars a week.