Gardening is on my mind. Had my first community garden meeting of 2020 last week. Tomorrow is the local Seed Swap Day.
Yes, we just had a big snowstorm this week - but still!!!
Today is National CSA Day - Community Supported Agriculture. Many people participate in a CSA box - weekly vegetables boxed and ready for you to take. Often with suggested recipes or guide to how to store the veggies.
This is something I’d LOVE to do - but don’t think it’s right for my household for a few reasons. Our household is mainly 2 - and H is a terrible vegetable eater. We also spend a fair amount of time away from home at our cottage - which is located in a farming area and we can get corn and veggies that was picked the hour before we purchase.
But I’d like to hear your experiences! I’m a CSA “wannabee”!!! Pros? Cons? How long is your subscription? Summer or fall? Or otherwise? Any perks with yours like recipes?
When the kids were younger & living at home, we looked into it. I saw a friend’s CSA box and I knew right away it would be very challenging to use everything in the box without a lot of waste & decided against it.
We had a modest garden at home (mostly tomatoes) and we would visit the farmer’s market for eggs & other vegetables.
The name of the book is escaping me, but the kids and I listened to … what was it? … Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and it reinforced for us the natural seasons for local availability. We learned a lot!
Most of the gardening I did in past years was “for the kids”.
We’ve belonged to a summer CSA for years and a winter one for the first time this year. With only two of us it can be a challenge to eat everything, but we both are invested in eating more vegetarian meals. I prefer the summer there’s a bigger variety of vegetables. The winter CSA delivers every three weeks and for us includes meat, chicken and/or a half dozen eggs. We get a lot of root vegetables. Who knew there were so many varieties of turnips and radishes! I made pickled turnips this week.
The first year the group that organized the CSA (mostly a group of medical school students) posted recipes, especially for the mystery items. Those are all still on the site they set up I believe, but I haven’t seen new recipes. My DH is the main contact person, so I may just not have been paying attention.
^^ @mathmom you’re my CC guru for the best vegetarian recipes and cookery!!
I am realizing that while I don’t CSA, I DO garden and visit the local farmer’s market weekly. So I’m sort of creating my own CSA. Maybe I should not look at this as a missed opportunity for me, but as A opportunity for those who don’t have the time/energy/know how/space to garden or get to a market.
We have done a CSA for many years. When the kids were all home, it was challenging for me to use all the veggies - this was before the internet was chock full of recipe ideas - so I struggled with how to use some of those veggies. And there was no way to get anyone to actually like kale. So after a few years, I let that CSA lapse.
Then 2 years ago, I got a CSA from a closer farm. This time I shared the large box with another family and that worked well. It was still a lot of veggies (there are only 2 of us at home now) but I am now better at finding recipes and I’m also better about freezing what we can’t eat now. So this will be my 3rd year with this farm. They also offer fun events to attend at their farm and since we are fairly close, we have attended them. The quality is far superior to what I find at my grocery store.
We have been in a summer CSA (May - October) for a number of years. Part of what we enjoy about it is the challenge of figuring out what to do with whatever it was they were harvesting this week. We have to go to the farm, which is connected to the city’s agricultural science high school only a few miles from our house, to pick up the produce.
It’s completely, 100% not cost-effective, especially given the fact that we are invariably away for 3-4 pickup days in the course of the season. And especially this year, when the quantities of everything seemed to be down. What cuts the other way a little bit is that the farm has pick-your-own (within limits) herb and flower gardens, and sometimes crops like okra, poblano peppers, tomatillos, and cherry tomatoes. That “free” stuff brings the overall cost down from ridiculous to merely high. Still, I enjoy it, except when I have to race out there with 15 minutes to spare in October and try to distinguish rosemary from lavender in the dark/rain.
I spent way too much on flowers at our local farmer’s market. They were so pretty! Sadly our CSA doesn’t have nearly as good heirloom tomatoes as the markets. Our CSA is very convenient. My husband just has to walk out of his building and into another nearby building on campus - or the courtyard if the weather is nice.
We did a CSA for a few summers and really enjoyed it, but they lost the nearby pick up site and it became inconvenient. We haven’t looked for another one because the last few years we have traveled a lot in the summer, but I would consider doing it again.
We tried a couple different CSAs but struggled with the Friday/Saturday pickups - we tend to eat out more on the weekends so I didn’t even start using the produce until day 3 or 4. For the last several years we have patronized the local farmers’ market - still on Saturdays but we can purchase just what we know we’ll use.
We have been members of a CSA for well over 10 years…maybe closer to 20. We live in a small town with two CSAs local. Our first CSA was in a neighboring town…then we switched to one that is really five minutes from out house.
We do the summer CSA which is 20 weeks long beginning in June.
Then we do the CSA extension which is about 4 weeks and ends the week of thanksgiving with lots of things that we use for the holiday, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, onions, winter squash, etc.
Right now we are doing that winter CSA which is every other week. Lots of great greenhouse veggies. This week we got two different kinds of lettuce! Plus we always get eggs.
W really like the fresh veggies, and we also get a 5% discount on everything else the farm sells (like our Christmas trees)
We did a CSA for about ten years–really enjoyed it, including the days we had to put a shift in. I liked experimenting with the different veggies. We stopped when we got a ssecond home which meant that we were not often there on pick up days, and also started a large veggie garden of our own. It’s a great experience!
