Community Supported Agriculture

Community Supported Agriculture: a share of Bitter Melon

Market Initiative: Building a consumer constituency for Bitter Melon
2006 - on-going

Community Supported Agriculture: a share of Bitter Melon is a project that literally and creatively inserted Bitter Melon into daily life. Our hope is to build community and dialogue around the common experience of foreignness that this unique vine, vegetable and flavor evokes. And we think that this relatively new socio-economic model of food distribution ideology, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), is the way to go.

For this project, we invite local farms to collaborate with us, and together bring the experience of Bitter Melon to a diverse audience through individual farm shares and farmer’s market stands. We provide seeds, growing tips, recipes, medicinal and nutritional information and are committed to working with CSA leaders to promote the vegetable in a manner consistent to the unique pre-existing working methods of each farm.

This is how it works
Collaborating farms grow Bitter Melon; we work with them to promote it to their members. During the CSA season, members receive weekly deliveries from that farm’s seasonal harvest. The content of the monthly shares are unknown to the buyers; they are dependent upon the weather, growing season, planting and harvest. The random nature of the weekly deliveries constructs an alternative relationship between the buyer, grower, and contemporary market culture. Inserting Bitter Melon, a vegetable challenging to the eyes as well as the tongue, particularly highlights the release of choice for interdependence and randomness inherent to this method of consumption.

As artists, we are drawn to the way that CSAs use strategies and produce results that parallel Mail Art, an art practice that began in the 1960’s which sought to subvert commodity-based art distribution systems by sending art objects – often at random – through the mail.

Read more about it!

2006 Collaborating CSA Farms

Bear Hill Farm
14 Davis Rd. Tyngsboro, MA 01879
Contact: Anne & Mike Gagnon
Phone: 978-692-4224
Email: bearhillfarm@aol.com
YES, they are still growing Bitter Melon!

Brookfield Farm
24 Hulst Rd. Amherst, MA 01002
Contact: Dan Kaplan
Phone: 413-253-7991
Email: info@brookfieldfarm.org

Hutchins Farm
754 Monument St. Concord, MA 01742
Phone: 978-369-5041
Email: hutchfarm@earthlink.net

Laughing Dog Farm
398 Main Rd. Gill, MA 01354
Contact: Divya and Danny Botkin
Phone: 413-863-8696
Email: dbotkin@valinet.com

Many Hands Organic Farm
411 Sheldon Rd. Barre, MA 01005
Contact: Jack and Julie Rawson
Phone: 978-355-2853
Email: farm@mhof.net
YES, they are still growing Bitter Melon!

Red Fire Farm
7 Carver St. Granby, MA 01033
Contact: Ryan Voiland
Phone: 413-467- SOIL
Email: redfirefarm@gmail.com