For the past 18 years David and Lise Abaz have run Round River Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), a service which connects farmers directly with their clients. However, despite their best attempts to find someone to take over CSA, the Finland, Minnesota couple, who are retiring, are reluctantly closing the operation down. Photo courtesy of Julia Kloen
Swarms of biting bugs, spadefuls of rich soil, and harvests of every color of the rainbow: this has been life at Round River Farm for the past 31 years. I have been lucky to be connected with Lise and David Abaz’s farm for the past five of these years, first as an intern and now living on the farm with my partner Colby Abaz.
I have always been able to see how much Lise and David love growing nutritious food for their community. The seeds of the farm were first planted when they founded their off-grid homestead in 1988. Ever since, they have nurtured their gardens with the with the help of compost, care, and no small amount of pickaxing and rock hauling. After several years running a farm stand, Lise and David began the Round River Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in the year 2000.
A CSA connects farmers directly with their consumer members, who give full payment at the beginning of the season and then receive weekly deliveries of produce.
The Abazs’s deep commitment to the CSA has made it all the more challenging for them to face the transitions required by the passage of time. For several years, their aching backs and jam-packed calendars have been shouting for them to find a young farmer to take over the CSA. Despite several hopes and attempts, however, the financial difficulties of farming in our society made it especially hard to find new farmers able to take it on. Therefore, this summer Lise and David made the tough decision to call 2018 the final season of their CSA.
Although they are retiring from the CSA, Lise and David will remain rooted in their Finland homestead and will keep their hands dirty in the fields. Like all good farmers, they are already dreaming about next year. Inspirations include growing specialty crops such as garlic and mustard, raising grains to feed the homestead community, conducting research, and being a seed farm. And yes, Lise and David will continue growing bountiful produce for the Finland farmers’ market in 2019 and beyond!
As the CSA winds to a close, looking back at the numbers is pretty impressive: 19 years, 11,000 coolers, 280,000 pounds of food. Even more important is what filled the coolers: buttery tender lettuce, sweet crisp carrots, juicy homegrown tomatoes.
In addition to producing vegetables, the Round River CSA served as a place where interns, field managers, and visitors were educated and inspired. As the CSA farm “goes to seed,” I know there are many people who will carry the impact of their experience here to wherever they land.
As the air grows crisp, autumn serves as a reminder that every living thing, including a farm, is part of a cycle. Our culture tends to see endings as failures, but consider the ways of nature: living things never last or grow forever, but are always transforming into something else. Along the way they nurture relationships, build foundations, and nourish a web of community.
Nature is also wildly creative and is always testing new possibilities with hope and energy. New thriving branches, old brittle branches…these records of past and present endeavors all together make a tree what it is. I like to think of the Round River CSA and its efforts toward building a local food system in the same way—just one of a million branching experiments slowly sculpting the future.
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