Teenage Girl Runs Her Own CSA Program

Alexandra Reau, a 14-year-old girl from Petersburg, Michigan, has launched her own CSA vegetable program.

By Kathryn Hawkins. Posted on July 21 2010

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Most teen jobs involve flipping burgers or scooping ice cream. But Alexandra Reau, of Petersburg, Mich., takes her food straight from the soil.

Since last summer, Reau has been running her very own C.S.A. (community-supported agriculture) program for 14 of her neighbors. They pay up to $175 for a share of vegetables and herbs that Reau grows by herself on a half-acre plot of her family’s land.

Reau is a longtime member of the 4-H Club, and has always been interested in farming. And she seems to have quite the green thumb: she’s successfully grown a huge variety of fresh produce, including carrots, spinach, beets, watermelon, tomatoes, onions, and garlic.

Reau’s customers all seem satisfied, so far. Mary Janicki joined the CSA last year, after learning that Reau had won an award for the idea from the Prima Civitas Foundation youth-inventors competition. “I read that she won that award and was only 13 years old, and I thought, This is a young lady who’s got it together!” she told the New York Times.

But her youth is only a side note to the main attraction: the veggies. “And that corn? Oh, my goodness!”

Filed under: Business, General Interest,

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