Dear Full Circle Farms

Every other week, I buy a medium box of produce from your organization and for the most part I have been very pleased with the quality of your product. I didn't expect that much variety - it being winter and all - and was very surprised one day when I found tomatoes and cucumbers from Mexico in the box. This was disturbing since your website says that you only bring in produce from small farms as far away as California. Well, I thought, maybe Full Circle got a bit confused by the whole border thing and Mexico seems to be just an extension of California and visa versa - so it's all good, right?

Instead of canceling my subscription right then and there, I decided to be a more discerning purchaser. Full Circle does give me the opportunity to change out five items for five other items that I had a nice list to choose from. For a whole month I diligently remembered to go through the box contents and take out those items that I KNEW were not coming from local farms. Tomatoes, kiwis, cucumbers, peppers, grapefruit, citrus (hemmed on this one) and a few other items were replaced with more carrots, kale, apples, spinach - anything that stayed in the northwest.

But then I got busy and forgot to check this last week prior to my delivery. Not only did I get green peppers and a cucumber - I got an organic mango from Peru! Peru? South America? I don't think this qualifies as a local farm from California, my friends.

There is something rather seductive about a big box of fruits and vegies that rivals what I can buy down at my local Whole Foods Market. I can imagine that over the years there have been complaints about getting carrots or parsnips or kale over and over again. I mean, really, how many potatoes can I go through in a month? I need to make soup again. But this dilemma was exactly why I wanted to use a CSA that promised only organic items from local farms and a few small farms down in California. I wanted to support the small farms and also challenge myself to eat more seasonally. And if that means making potato soup more than once over the winter - that's okay.

So I feel disappointment that somehow the very standards by which this farm puts out into the community are subverted from within. The choices you make probably have a lot to do with staying afloat financially or making more money to support your sustainable practices. What I find disturbing is that you purport to support all the current sustainability/organic/ go small farm movements - but what I see is that it is just marketing rhetoric for you.

And, by the way, the quality of that mango? It tasted like paste. So did the tomatoes from Mexico. I know what kind of plants are used in order to make a little red tomato okay to travel the distance to my doorstep - and flavor is the first thing that disappears.