CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) as we know it today in the United States has it’s origin in 1960’s Japan.  Say what?  The Seikyou Movement which is short for Seikatsu Kyoodo Kumiai, translates roughly into “Living Cooperative Union”.  In 1960’s Toyko a group of around 200 housewives were becoming increasingly concerned about the mercury levels of a nearby industrially polluted lake.  They sought clean food for their families and approached local dairy farmers.  They offered the farmers a premium price for their milk up front in return for the assurance that the farmers would produce it “cleanly” without the use of chemical or synthetic inputs.

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“The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

• Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

One of my very favorite books of all time though at the time I first read it I was not the beet lover I am today.  Beets are incredibly fun to grow and even more fun to juice, pickle, shave onto salads and naturally dye and flavor pasta dough with.

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