The knees of my jeans are totally muddy, and I’m wonderfully happy.

I’ve just spent the weekend in my garden, planting the first cabbage, bok choi and spinach. Under grow lights in the basement, the first sprouts of chard are emerging.  About 36 tomato seeds just went into their little pots and are under the lights, too.

I have a gizmo that helps me fashion little pots out of newspaper strips — a new kind of recycling! — but, gee, it takes forever. And I got ink all over my hands. So after about 30 newspaper pots I wimped out and bought peat pots, which also biodegrade.

This year, we went bigger than ever. We have a plot of about 1,500 square feet, not counting a dozen blueberry bushes now thick with buds and an irregular area we refer to as “squash hill.”
The garden never looks so good as it does now — firm in my mind as a beautiful spot that is weed-free, pest-free and brimming with goodies.

Reality will set in soon enough.

For those who aren’t gardners because of space or inclination, not to worry.

Community supported agriculture has come to the rescue. It’s a growing movement, and here’s the gist:

The area is rich with small farms that sell annual “shares” to customers.  The farmer gets the money — for seed, for new equipment and the like — up front, and the customers get to come to farm once a week (usually) from late spring through early fall, loading up on veggies and other goods.

The week’s share, depending on what has ripened and what’s plentiful, is usually posted on a blackboard or some such. They’ll specify how many heads of cabbage and how many tomatoes you can take, for instance. But often things like herbs and flowers and paste tomatoes when they come in - yikes!! - are pick-your-own and take-as-much-as-you-want.

Neighbors of ours have belonged to a CSA farm for several years.

One of our great treats was when they went on vacation and asked us to feed their cat. As a consequence, we got to go pick up their weekly half-share at a nearby CSA. Holy cow!  In addition to the usual, there were food items we had never grown, and in a few cases, never even heard of. What fun. And it was more than two people could eat in a week.

Now is the time to sign up, because summer’s a-coming.

At Maysie’s Farm in Glenmoore, Chester County, the soil has been workable (not frozen, and dry enough) for a couple weeks. So owner Sam Cantrell and his crew already have the earliest crops — peas, fava beans, beets, carrots, scallions, spinach -- in the ground.

In the greenhouses, they’ve planted lettuce, bok choi, kale, collards, swiss chard, stir fry greens, scads of onions and the first tomato and pepper seeds.

They plant roughly 50 crops.

Cantrell has also researched lots of other local foods, so shareholders can purchase separately local chicken and eggs, pork, beef, goat-milk soap, organic raw fruits, organic raw milk, cheeses and so on.

A family share at Maysie’s is $690 for the season, and I gather that’s typical. Some CSAs also offer half-shares, or discounted prices if people pledge a certain number of work hours.

The philosophy behind it is that the farmers get their money up front, when they need it, and the members share in the vagaries of weather and other hardships that could affect the annual crop.

It’s another little way of staying in touch with nature.

Added to that now, to a growing extent, is an awareness of the environmental benefits of eating locally. Most produce, as one oft-bandied statistic holds, travels an average of 1,500 miles from field to plate. That’s a lot of miles and a lot of fuel, and I believe it every time I go to the grocery store and see asparagus or some such from Peru. (From Philadelphia to Lima, it’s more than 3,500 miles.)

Cantrell is just one of more than a dozen CSAs in this region.

The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture maintains a list of CSA farms. Membership director Michele Gauger says CSA farm subscriptions are booming.

I couldn’t find anything as comprehensive for New Jersey, but for starters, a list is maintained by the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey.

A national list is maintained by the folks at Wilson College in Chambersburg.

Cantrell says the nation’s whole food system is in the consumer’s hands. “People are realizing the difference between cheap food and good food, and there’s a BIG difference.”

Meanwhile, this is a favorite time of year for him, too.

“This is when it’s all full of potential. Everything’s exciting.  And the weeds have not yet taken over the world.”