Every summer for the past several years, we’ve participated in a CSA with a local farm. CSA stands for Community Sponsored Agriculture or Community Supported Agriculture. Some call it a “farm share”. We call it a box of locally grown, mostly organic, yummy vegetables that we didn’t have to grow. We’ve been with the same farm since we started and have always been happy with what we received. We always get a lot of our favorite items and some things we’ve never tried before like kolrabhi and oddly colored heirloom tomatoes.
Every week we pick up a box of fruits and vegetables. Optional add-ons include a half-dozen or full dozen eggs from their free-range chickens as well as beef and poultry from their organic stock. We’ve always gotten a printed letter each week with storage and handling tips for each item, some recipes to try, and often a description of daily happenings at the farm. They usually host a farm visit, but we haven’t attended since the boys were small. In recent years, they’ve added a blog, email reminders, and additional pickup points for boxes. We used to drive downtown to the farmer’s market each week to pick up our share, now it is conveniently available at the local Liquor Barn, just in case mom & dad need to pick up anything else while we’re there!
For week 1, we got asparagus, dried beans, green & red leaf lettuce, spinach, salad radishes, and strawberries.
The beginning of each summer is usually greens, greens, and more greens. We ate the lettuce & radishes in pre-dinner salads. The strawberries didn’t even last 24 hours! The dried beans were stored for later. The spinach was used in Paul’s homemade pasta, something we all love. He has a pasta-making attachment for the Kitchenaid mixer and even boys who won’t touch cooked spinach will wolf it down once it is added to his homemade fettucine with chicken. We often grill asparagus but this time we chopped it & mixed it with Yukon potatoes in a baking dish with olive oil and garlic dill seasoning from Tastefully Simple.
Do you participate in a farm share? What’s the most unusual item you’ve gotten so far?