Community-supported agriculture

Fifteen miles from the supermarkets of Yuba City and Marysville, Jim Muck's group of plots and greenhouses east of Wheatland is home to a farming enterprise unlike almost any other in the Mid-Valley. In place of shopping carts and shelves are rows of organic tomatoes, green beans and squash – and one rangy farmer overseeing it all.

Whether harvesting seeds from a greenhouse, hand-picking vegetables or packing produce for his customers' Thursday pickups, Muck's Fresh My Farm Vegetables is a one-man show – and an example of community-supported agriculture, a movement joining local growers with consumers attracted to hand-tended produce from close to home.

"It makes people who don't live on a farm think like a farmer, to be conscious consumers of food and not just consumers of calories," Muck said last week while inspecting squash and eggplant plots on his family's 180-acres. "A lot of people lack that connection to the earth."