Beth and I just joined our first CSA, New Moon Farms. In case you don’t know, CSA stands for “community supported agriculture” and the idea is that you buy a share (or, in our case, a half-share) of one growing season at a local farm. The farmers plant, raise, and harvest the food, and then split it up among the members of the CSA. So, if it’s a good year, we get lots of food. If it’s a bad year, we get less. But regardless, it’s all fresh locally-grown stuff raised by a farming family we can meet and talk to, as opposed to coming out of some faceless megacorp at the local supermarket.
We’ll get fresh produce, herbs, etc. every Wednesday from May until October. Presumably, a half-share is enough for 1-2 people, so I hope we won’t have so much we have to throw anything out. Of course, it’s possible that if it goes well, we could do a full-share in 2008 and then store some of the food over the winter. But that might require getting a bigger freezer or a dehydrator. I think I’m too lazy to can stuff in Mason jars.
Good luck with the CSA! My husband and I joined for the first time last year, but we decided to be brave and sign up for the full share. It was a wonderful experience, and I’ve written some about it on our blog, butterwhat.blogspot.com
I hope you have as great of an experience as we did!
Lisa
Thanks for the pointer to your blog, Lisa. Your recipes are making me hungry! I’d encourage you to keep posting to it, even more often next season. Maybe I’ll do the same. We got our official CSA member certificate from New Moon Farms CSA last week, but we won’t see any food from it for another several months. My biggest concern is that we’ll get more veggies than we can deal with and we’ll run out of freezer space to store them over the winter.
Yay! Thanks for the comments on my blog! I’m determined to keep up with it better this year, and knowing someone is out there watching is really motivating.
I can relate to your concern about being overrun with the veggies, since that is exactly how we felt last year. It really turned out to not be that difficult. My best suggestion is to get the vegetables into every meal. I started packing a lunch to take to work, and not only did it help with the vegetables, it was a nice way to save money too.
I’ll get the zuchini quiche recipe up soon, and I’ll be adding a link to you from my blog.
Lisa