By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

Benicia Community Gardens has been encouraging residents to start planting and harvesting their own produce.

Now the group behind the city’s public growing spaces is experimenting with a pilot program that brings fresh, organic fruits and vegetables to those who have no space, time or skill for home gardening, Acting Executive Director Elena Karoulina said.

Starting Wednesday, subscribers to Terra Firma Farm, a 99-acre California certified organic farm, will be picking up boxes of seasonal produce at Heritage Presbyterian Church, site of Benicia Community Garden’s first series of plots erected in 1999.

Karoulina said the pilot program’s registration is closed for the moment while her organization determines whether members of the initial group of subscribers are willing to keep buying boxes.

“We’ve limited it to see how it goes,” Karoulina said.

“This is the first time for Benicia.”

The pilot program is giving a small group of Benicians a chance to participate in a program called Community Supported Agriculture, through which small farms that practice sustainable agriculture contract directly with nearby urban consumers for the sale of their products.

Money stays in the region and helps keep the local farm productive, while city-dwellers benefit from freshly delivered, locally grown fruits, vegetables and nuts.

Subscribers have paid in advance for their choice of a small, medium or large box of the farm’s fruits and vegetables to be delivered at the church parking lot each Wednesday afternoon, Karoulina said.

While the subscribers know the food is coming straight from the organic farm, they don’t always know what’s in the box — though the farm’s website, terrafirmafarm.com, provides a chart that shows what products are growing during specific months.

“It’s seasonal,” Karoulina explained. The boxes arriving Wednesday should have roots and greens, and may have winter citrus, too.

“In spring, there will be strawberries, asparagus and garlic. You get what’s growing.”

There are advantages and drawbacks to participating in such a program, and Karoulina, who has been buying her fresh foods this way for some time, conceded, “I struggled at first. The minus is you don’t have a choice.”

But as she continued as a subscriber, she began to appreciate the freshness of the food, and that it was certified as organically grown.

That, for her, was the biggest plus.

“When you go to the supermarket, you don’t know what you are buying,” she said. The food travels innumerable miles before it arrives. “It comes from all over the world. I would not call it sustainable.”

While the crops sold at the Benicia Certified Farmers Market, which returns in April, are from California, they are shipped in from the Central Valley.

Terra Firma Farm, meanwhile, is about 40 miles away in Winters. Its use of pesticides and fertilizers is limited to those approved by the national Organic Programs, and the farm doesn’t use toxic or petroleum-derived chemicals.

Those are other pluses, Karoulina said.

Benicia Community Gardens chose to work with Terra Firma Farm in part because it produces a newsletter that provides recipes and serving suggestions in addition to information about the produce. That’s a benefit to subscribers who may be unfamiliar with some of the items in their boxes.

For instance, in a recent newsletter, the farm described how leeks differ from onions, and how that affects how they’re cleaned, cooked and stored.

Subscribers have chosen from small, medium and large boxes, depending on their lifestyle and the size of their families. They will be picking it up on the same day many of the Benicia Community Gardens participants work on their plots at the Heritage Presbyterian Church, 1400 East Second St., and have their noon picnic at the site.

“We’ll have volunteers to help you find your box,” she said.

Through an agreement with Estey Real Estate and Property Management, the community gardens group acquired a temporary downtown site in 2010 for its second community garden at the intersection of First and East D streets.

Karoulina said her organization wants to wait a few weeks to see how well the current round of subscribers respond before accepting more, but those interested may visit the farm’s website to learn more about its operation.

In addition to Benicia, the farm also makes deliveries to sites in Solano and Yolo counties. The farm asks new subscribers to sign on for at least a month, and with notice can change the size of the box they order and the site where they pick up their boxes.

Learn More
Visit terrafirmafarm.com to find out more about receiving local produce shipped to Benicia.