Featured CSA: 2Silos Farm, Ohio
Former urban professionals Denise and Cameron Anderson bought their five-acre Ohio farm, dubbed 2silos, in 2003. Raising chickens and then selling the eggs at Columbus-area farmers markets was mostly a hobby for Denise, who had grown up on an Indiana farm, but when Cameron lost his job as a Web developer, the couple—along with teenage son Peter—decided to expand their operation and team up with several neighboring farms to start a CSA. Through savvy marketing, referrals from friendly vegetable farmers, and word of mouth, 2silos signed up 33 subscribers in its first year (2008). “We have had so much interest, the CSA has really sold itself,” Denise says. “I guess we filled a niche locally.”
The CSA offers monthly boxes of various cuts of meat in full (20 lb.) and half (10 lb.) shares. It also features the innovative “adopt-a-hen” program, in which member families receive 40 dozen eggs, a stewing chicken, and five gallons of henhouse compost over the course of a year. Along with their pasture-raised chickens and lamb, the Andersons supply the CSA with geese and vegetables, while neighboring farms supply pasture-raised pork, rabbits, and organically raised grass-fed beef. In an effort to make 2silos as sustainable as possible, Cameron converts waste cooking oil from a local Chinese restaurant and a nearby small college into biodiesel that can be used for heating and transportation on the farm.
Business is so good that in 2009, 2silos Farm will launch a 100-share summer meat CSA as well as a new summer harvest CSA for produce, eggs, and preserves.
Photo Credit: 2Silos Farm
