CSA BOX EXAMPLES

NOTE FROM THE FARMER: Our CSA is currently paused. In the meantime please visit our shop for shelf stable products that ship nationwide, or find us every Sunday at the Sebastopol Certified Farmers Market. We will announce any updates through our newsletter.

The Radical Family Farms vegetable box program started as a deeply personal project - my way of recovering the cultural heritage that assimilation had made hard to access. Growing up Mixed-Asian American in the Midwest, I had no real connection to Asian vegetables. Other than bok choy and napa cabbage, I did not know what they were, where to find them, or how to use them. That changed when I started farming and discovered the Kitazawa Seed Catalog, which opened up an entire world of Taiwanese, Chinese and Korean seed varieties representing the multiple Asian heritages in my own family.

I taught myself to farm using no-till methods from the Market Gardener book, while simultaneously figuring out crops I had never grown, seen or cooked with. Many were listed only by their Cantonese names in seed catalogs and growing guides, so I had to translate Cantonese to Mandarin so my own family could recognize what I was growing. It was farming and cultural archaeology at the same time.

Our CSA members were on that journey with me. As each season progressed we were learning together - what these vegetables were, how to cook them, what to call them. Many of our members were discovering these crops for the first time like I was. Those with more experience - like Adrian Chang, Linda Esposito and Henry Hsu - would help educate our community with recipes and live cooking classes. That shared discovery was at the heart of what made our program meaningful.

We may bring the CSA back in the future. In the meantime please seek out and support Asian farmers growing these crops - and extend that support to Asian owned grocery stores and Asian owned Asian restaurants as well.

Asian heritage vegetable farming in the United States was built by Asian farmers - through cultural knowledge, community networks, seed sourcing from Asia, and years of educating consumers about crops most Americans had never encountered. As demand grows, non-Asian small farmers are entering this space to profit from that groundwork without the cultural investment or care behind it. This drives prices down, saturates the market, and pushes out the farmers with genuine ties to these crops and this community.

This is not about excluding anyone. It is about asking consumers to be conscious of who built this market, who it belongs to, and who most needs their support to stay in it.

Please buy from Asian farmers, Asian grocers, Asian makers and Asian owned Asian restaurants intentionally. Ask who is growing your Asian vegetables and why. Your dollar is a vote for who gets to keep farming these crops.

In Solidarity, Leslie Wiser, Radical Family Farms