Join a CSA (#31)

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Basically, you pay a farm directly, and every so often you get a box of whatever fruits and vegetables they grow on their farm delivered to you. I'd been wanting to do this for awhile, because I love the idea of the people who grow the crop actually getting paid for it directly, rather than selling it for less than what it is worth to large companies, who sell it to grocery stores, who sell it to you. Also, cuts way down on the amount the food has to travel before it gets to you. This way it gets picked, and delivered...that's all.

The CSA we chose has a pretty wide distribution in the Bay Area and they have the option of pasture raised eggs, which I'm pretty excited about. The picture shows everything we got in our box last week. We get a box every other week because it is actually a LOT of food in there.

If you click on the picture to make it larger, you can see: swiss chard (leafy green with bright red stems), radishes (small, purple and white), onions (huge and purple), a bundle of fresh rosemary, fava beans (right in the middle, they look like huge pea pods), carrots, a bag of fresh baby spinach, asparagus, green onions, strawberries, sweet potatoes and the eggs. The paper bag on the left side has dried peaches in it.

We've picked up two boxes so far, and we're pretty happy with it. It does take some adjusting to, and it does help if you've been comfortable making dishes that rely on vegetables, which we'd gotten used to. But now, we get our box and then have to plan our recipes and go to the farmer's market to pick up anything else we want/need. Also - this is all fresh picked, harvested. That bag of spinach still had dirt and mud, so it is a little bit more time intensive to clean/prepare, but we enjoy it.

I'm not sure we'll stick with this specific farm (we have two more boxes to go on our trial run) but I think the CSA idea may stick. Either way, goal complete.