Thursday, Sept.
7, 2006 — Piqua Daily Call
Kristie Fisher stands near a row of cherry tomatoes planted in her garden as she speaks with
visitors to her farm, Rush Creek Gardens on Snodgrass Road.
Local farm offers fresh Local farm
produce, new tastes
Participants receive weekly supply
BY BECCA MANNING
Staff Writer
bmanning@dailycall.com
PIQUA — When Michele
Orzano joined the community
supported agriculture (CSA)
program offered at the Rush
Creek Gardens farm in Piqua
she knew she could expect a
bag of fresh produce every
week.
She didn’t know she’d also
get blue potatoes.
“I have never seen blue po-
tatoes in the store, but
they’re delicious — and
they’re fresh,” Orzano said,
referring to the purplish-blue
potatoes she and Rush Creek
Gardens owner Kristie Fisher
dug up one day when they
were working in the garden.
Orzano has been getting
fresh vegetables from
Fisher’s business since the
end of May and said one of
the reasons she enjoys the
program is the anticipation of
what they’ll pick next.
“This lets me have lot of
different variety of vegeta-
bles and enjoy them and find
out ‘would I buy this again’,”
Orzano said. “You have to be
kind of willing to try some
different things.”
A Troy resident, Orzano
learned about Fisher and her
Piqua farm in a monthly
magazine and decided to sign
up for the program, which
provides her and 24 other
families throughout the
Miami Valley with a bag of
fresh produce every week for
See LOCAL FARM/Page 10
JAMES E. MAHAN/STAFF PHOTO
Continued from page 1
fresh produce every week
for a share price paid at the
start of the growing season
— which runs from June
through October.
“I just thought that
sounded like something fun
to do this year and a way to
find some creative way to
add more vegetables (to my
diet),” Orzano said.
She also takes advantage
of a work option, which
gives customers a price re-
duction for every eight
hours they spend helping
with the planting, growing
and maintenance of the gar-
den.
This is the third growing
season for the CSA program
at Rush Creek Gardens,
though owner Kristie Fisher
has been selling locally
grown, fresh produce in
farmer’s markets through-
out the area for about a
decade.
After years of selling at
markets in and around Day-
ton, Fisher said she experi-
enced a sort of “market
burnout” and was looking
for a new set-up.
“I wanted to sell it all. I
didn’t want to bring any-
thing home,” Fisher said.
“Now I know how many peo-
ple I’m growing for. What I
pick I put in their bag.”
Fisher grew up in Dayton
and said she has always had
an interest in farming and
environmental education.
She earned an associate’s
degree in recreation and
wildlife biology from Hock-
ing College in Nelsonville
and a bachelor of arts de-
gree in ecological agricul-
ture and education from
Evergreen State College in
Olympia, Wash.
As she began learning
more about farming and
food, Fisher said she also
discovered some not-so-
pleasant truths about the
process of getting food from
the fields to a person’s plate.
“I had a realization of
how far removed the public
was from where their food
comes from,” Fisher said.
More than 10 years ago,
she started operating Rush
Creek Gardens on about
three of 40 acres of Piqua
farmland that is owned by
her mother, Carolyn Kimes.
She operates the gardens
with the help of her hus-
band, Ted, and some area
high schoolers who work
there over the summer.
Fisher grows more than
60 crops, including herbs,
fruit, popcorn and vegeta-
bles such as cabbage, winter
and summer squash, cherry
tomatoes and Swiss chard.
She also occasionally pro-
vides CSA families with
fresh flowers.
Fisher said she some-
times takes requests — she
recently started growing
lima beans per someone’s
suggestion — but she also
grows vegetables some peo-
ple may not be familiar
with.
With each bag of produce
she includes a recipe page
telling customers what
they’re getting that week
and what to expect next,
along with recipes for how to
prepare certain foods.
“A lot of people say it has
encouraged them to eat foods
they wouldn’t normally eat,”
Fisher said. “It really encour-
ages you to have a healthier
diet because you have the
stuff, you’ve already paid for
it, and you don’t want it to rot
in the refrigerator.”
People who sign up for the
CSA program do so with an
understanding that what they
receive depends a lot on the
weather and can change year
to year.
“The people who eat the
food are sharing in the bene-
fits ... and the miseries,”
Fisher said. “One year one
crop does good but another
might fail.”
A lot of people like the idea
of the community agriculture
program, but it may not be
practical for their lifestyles,
Fisher said, adding that peo-
ple who don’t cook at home
more than four nights a week
probably would end up wast-
ing a lot of the produce.
But offering the public a
chance to get locally grown
food is important at a time
when many people are discon-
nected from the source of their
food and the path it takes to
their tables, Fisher said.
Getting produce from area
farms keeps local money in
the local economy, Fisher said.
And the food is guaranteed
fresh.
“The food at the grocery
store is often pretty well trav-
eled. Food you get from CSA
is usually picked that day or
the day before,” she said.
Though her food is not cer-
tified organic, Fisher does
grow crops without using arti-
ficial chemicals or pesticides
and uses sustainable farming
practices such as crop rota-
tion and cover cropping — in
which certain crops are grown
just to be plowed back into
the field to enrich the soil
with organic matter.
“We’ve got lots of soil activ-
ity ... which makes for health-
ier soil, and that makes for
healthier food and healthier
people,” Fisher said.
The public is invited to see
what’s growing at Rush Creek
Gardens this Saturday, one of
several Summer Farm Tours
planned across the state and
sponsored by the Ohio Ecolog-
ical Food and Farm Associa-
tion.
The free tour will be held
— rain or shine — from noon
to 3 p.m. at Fisher’s farm, lo-
cated at 801 W. Snodgrass
Road in Piqua. Visitors will
see where Fisher grows food
as well as tour the rest of the
acreage and enjoy some cider
around a campfire. Fisher
and others will answer ques-
tions about local farming and
talk about community sup-
ported agriculture.