A week's sampling of produce from Tucson Community Supported Agriculture. Contents for members vary with the season, of course.

PHoto illustration by dean knuth / arizona daily star

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The produce you eat could be better traveled than you are. Chances are, what you pick up in the grocery stores comes from far, far away. It might be from across the country, continent or beyond.

In fact, the average Iowa meal travels roughly 1,600 miles from its usual sources, according to a study done by World Resources Inc. in Washington, D.C. It's safe to assume Arizona's food gets around, too.

The Tucson Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group aims to change that. The group's members want the sources of the produce they eat to be close — very close, with the least amount of traveling possible.

Their produce is picked the day or the day before they pick it up and is delivered from an 18.75-acre farm in Glendale to group members at the Tucson CSA headquarters, in a little courtyard off East University Boulevard.

The produce is seasonal and perfectly ripened, not to mention naturally grown and organic.

Gretel Hakanson and her husband, Raj Helweg, recently took their share of amaranth — a slightly sweet, leafy green they'd never eaten before — and sautéed it with oil and garlic, just like they do with spinach.

"It was good," said Hakanson, 34. "It tasted like the spinach does — like garlic."

Being a member of a CSA can sometimes feel like you're an Iron Chef — cooking with unusual vegetables you haven't chosen yourself — but it's important for Hakanson, a Web developer, and Helweg, a pilot, to support local farmers. They also know they're having a minimal impact on the environment by buying locally. In their view, the less gas used to deliver their food, the better.

"There's going to be a need for this in the future. When gas prices go up, we'll all need local farmers. If we practice with what we get now, we'll be way ahead of the game. We'll look forward to amaranth," said Helweg, 36. "And we're not granola-types either."

In any given week, the couple pick up a cornucopia of seasonal vegetables. A recent harvest yielded one melon (golden honeydew, canary or watermelon), two red bell peppers, two ears of white corn, 3/4 pound of pecans, 1/2 pound of green beans, one bag of roasted green chiles, a choice of basil or lemon grass, and one head of garlic.

Helweg and Hakanson supplement their CSA pickup with staple produce, including tomatoes, salad and fruit, they buy at grocery stores. Hakanson tries to shop at locally owned places like Rincon Market or Food Conspiracy Cooperative.

"It doesn't necessarily work for everybody," said Philippe Waterinckx, the CSA organizer. "You get a set amount of produce that you might not necessarily like. But it forces you to change your shopping and cooking habits."

But the CSA's Web site — www.tucsoncsa.org — does feature recipes for preparing the produce, including ideas for cooking beets, chiles, greens, potatoes and squash. If members aren't familiar with how to prepare certain foods, they learn. Or experiment.

"Sometimes we use the same cooking techniques, just different vegetables. We substitute a lot," Helweg said.

If members find that some produce isn't to their liking, it's possible to trade with other members using the "trade box" — you put something in and take something comparable out.

One day there might be surplus basil from another member's garden and someone else's unwanted chiles. Another day, there's a "surplus box" full of sweet potatoes from the farmer and everyone's free to benefit from his bounty.

Although the produce isn't certified organic, Waterinckx can attest to it being grown organically. "It's expensive to become certified, and, really, when you know your farmer, you don't need a certification process. We know our farmer," he said, adding that the farmer also pays his workers a fair wage — at least $8 an hour, with raises often.

"We want to be sustainable not just environmentally but socially and economically. Farmers and farmworkers should be able to make a living," Waterinckx said.

The produce is grown for taste, not looks, he added, meaning that while it might not look as pretty as its kin in the grocery aisles, it tastes much better.

Racheli Gai can attest to that. It's very important to her to eat organic produce, and she's smitten with the food and the people at the CSA.

"There's a halo over his head," she said of Waterinckx for creating the organization.

Gai, 57, is distraught by the books she reads about agribusiness and finds solace in feeling connected to the local food she buys.

"When it's local, I can know how my food has been raised and how the farmer treats the workers," she said. "Agribusiness is causing huge, huge levels of environmental destruction. We need to change things."

Gai, who's been a Tucson CSA member for about two years, has become the change she wants to see.

She's been searching for locally raised chicken to buy but still finds satisfaction that the CSA offers local goat cheese, grass-fed beef and eggs. "All of this is a learning process," Gai said.

"This is a small thing, coming here," said Helweg. "They don't have to truck your food all over tarnation. Even little things you do, though, can keep impact down. If everybody does something small, then bigger things follow."