Eat Local, Give Local

Space Girl Organics Sustains Community Supported Agriculture on the Space Coast

By: Craig Chapman

Eating is one of the great rewards in life. Knowing your food before you eat it is an even greater reward. Where did it come from? How was it grown? Who grew it? What sort of life did it have? All questions one should know the answer to before we eat what’s on our plate. For many different reasons (lack of time, lack of resources, etc.), we can’t always get the answers to these questions. Step in Space Girl Organics, a local, community supported agriculture connector that was started in 2011 by Lucinda Clark to help people get the answers to these questions and put healthy, sustainable, locally grown food on our plates.

Clark started the company because of a life changing experience she had as a child that she then turned in to a mission as an adult. “When I was 11 years old my father died, leaving my mother with six mouths to feed and a farm she couldn’t afford. Without the input capital required for Big Ag(riculture) she worked two jobs to keep our home, and oftentimes we were hungry even though we lived on all that farmland. It didn’t make sense to me as a child, so as a grown up I made it my mission in life to help farmers be independent outside of Big Ag.”

In short, here’s how Space Girl Organics works: You sign up to have a box of fresh produce and fruits delivered to you every week, or every other week (you decide). You choose what size box you want and customize it. Space Girl Organics works with their network of farmers to decide what’s fresh and seasonal that week and they deliver your box to your home or office. There are several other variables but essentially that’s it! On any given week a box may contain: asparagus, strawberries, apples, kale, tomatoes, carrots, blackberries, and more.

The idea of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) isn’t a new one. Some of the first CSAs can be traced back to Japan in the 1960s and they were started for the same reasons we have them today — to know and get food from your local farmer. The rise in popularity over the past decade or more is a positive turn in the way we get our food today. Clark says, “The rise of the CSA is partly due to consumers being interested in how their dollars impact the community, and also because the grocery store has become overwhelming with aisle upon aisle of sketchy substances packaged to look like nutrition.”

Space Girl Organics takes the fundamentals of a CSA a step further by giving back to the community as well. Clark explains, “We donate all left over (and then some) produce to the local food banks to the tune of 36,000 pounds a year. We also have an item of the week program. Each week we collect a small item (say toothbrushes) from our customers and then distribute those to people in need.”

Wow, small gestures like this take the already positive effects of Space Girl Organics on the local community above and beyond! If you are looking to support your own health, environment and community in a positive way and get some delicious food in the process, give Space Girl Organics a try.


www. SpaceGirlOrganics.com
Email: hello@spacegirlorganics.com
Tel: (321) 821-7610