I have not always eaten my vegetables. It took One Straw Farm to convert me, at least in season, to become a vegetarian.  The garlic has a snap to it.  Bok choy, sautéed with cayenne, is my new first course. Add a soccer ball sized watermelon, and it’s a feast.

I know it’s excellent chemical-free, fresh produce as a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) customer of One Straw; I pay up front in early spring for a half share every week delivered to a convenient local establishment.  I pick up my share at St. Luke’s Methodist Church, an easy walk from my Baltimore home in Hampden.  I love the idea of owning a tiny bit of the farm, of supporting what I think is a healthy venture for the land, and for my health.

When CSAs started back in the 1980s, they were predominantly organic. They offered consumers seeking to buy healthy, local food a way to buy directly from the farmers. The most successful are those which have “maintained a close farmer-consumer connection,” according to a USDA survey. (Read more at USDA survey of CSAs.)

I feel the connection when I drive up north to New Freedom, almost to the Pennsylvania line to visit the farm.

The small sign marks the turn, to the rolling 172 acres, punctuated with small ponds as part of a water project.  I drive past one rambling white wood house, past a lot full of about a dozen tractors in varying states of repair. There is a house complex on the left, where 15 migrant workers stay for the season and a complex of lots, mixed with greenhouses.

Joan and Drew Norman have been at this since 1983. They did start small, Joan recalls comfortably seated in her wood paneled dining room.. They began selling wholesale at farmers’ markets.  They set up the CSA and the CSA market took off.  “People wanted to buy local.  There were food scares after 9-11,” says Joan. For example, consumers were alarmed by spraying of Alar on apples when studies showed the pesticide posed a significant risk to health.

From eight families picking up produce at Boordy Vineyards, One Straw has grown to 2,000 families or individuals picking up fresh produce at 28 sites. Most of the customers like me belong to CSAs. The shares which are sold at the beginning of the season provide the farm with most of its income for business.

Today they grow a great variety of vegetables from arugula to watermelon, all organic.  One Straw is one of Maryland’s largest independent agricultural operations— “a successful, sustainable farm,” comments Joan,  “that has grown beyond our expectations.”

And they are organic. “They used to think of us as some hippy farm. Things have changed a lot,” she says.  With more focus on healthy chemical-free eating, demand has boomed as they sell to local restaurants, farmers markets and CSAs.

“I feed 10,000 people a week,” Joan estimates.

One Straw uses a variation of regenerative practices: cover crops, crop rotation, but they do not use livestock to fertilize the soil.  Due to their intensive compost operation, they can’t use the extra nitrogen provided by the livestock.  The soil is tested regularly; any more nitrogen goes over the limits imposed by the Nutrient Management system.  In other words, they have rich soil already, thanks to super composting.

Without pesticides, compost becomes the most important ingredient for growing good vegetables. “The process to creating compost takes as much time as there are ingredients,” says Joan. “First there is the hay shredder, towed behind the tractor at less than 1 mph.” It shreds the hay and shoots it onto the compost pile.

The other machine is a compost turner which chops and mixes it up. When it is all said and done, each pile receives at least 5 bales of hay and has the turner run overtop at least 10 times,

“Our soil smiles a lot,” she says. “The difference is the compost.”

At the Waverly Market where One Straw is a favorite on Saturdays, Joan presides at the farm’s vegetable and flower stalls. She runs around in her beat-up boots (without socks), hands in her pockets to offer change, when customers want to pay in cash. Then she’ll go over behind the boxes of produce and talk vegetables with her customers.           

“How did you get this to grow so tall?” asks a faithful customer, picking up a long bunch of collard greens.

“My husband,” says Joan, who is not going to take credit for Drew, who is in the background, or not present, at the markets.  “He’s in charge of fertilizer.”

The customer admires the rainbow stalks.

“It doesn’t taste different,” she says.  “It’s just pretty.”  She pays Joan for the collards, both rainbow and plain that she will use for juice. 

During the Saturday morning market, Joan will give out tattoos to children, offer free advice to mothers about how to get their children to eat broccoli, and make connections with her customers that have been coming for decades.

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In late August, One Straw opened a field to shareholders for sunflower picking– as much as you can load in your car.  Joan and her son Andrew sit under a makeshift tent as their CSA partners (everyone who owns a share) appear at a field of sunflowers, brilliant yellow, shining in the sun.  Andrew planted a bag of $20 birdseed, and it bloomed into this golden field.    He describes his role at the farm as “chief protein person.” He deals with everything Dad doesn’t want to do.”  At one time he couldn’t get far enough away.  “As a grown up I appreciate the solitude.. ”The sunflowers are for the customers—and after blooming, offer a feast for thousands of goldfinches and other birds.

I load up with four big tubs of sunflowers, I divvy up some to my neighbors and place bottles of them in every corner of my house.  Then I sauté up some more bok choy and enjoy my bit of One Straw–a taste of summer that lingers past Labor Day.