Hooray, Hooray for CSA’s!

It’s that time of year again that I look forward to in eager anticipation all Spring. When fruit and veggie prices start to go on the rise, and things get a little lean, our Groundworks Organics CSA comes in and saves the day! What, might you ask, is a CSA? This stands for Community Supported Agriculture, which means that folks buy a farm share early in the year from a local farm, and the farm provides each shareholder with a box of vegetables every week during the growing season, which is their share from the harvest. There are also meat and egg CSA’s out there (like our favorite, Deck Family Farm), fruit and berry CSA’s, and I recently learned of a wildcrafted mushroom CSA in our area.

If you’re intrigued, and wondering what CSA’s are all about, check out this great video of folk singer, Seth Bernard’s “Talkin’ CSA Blues” from Youtube. Sometimes a song says it best!

Even with our giant garden this year, we didn’t want to give up the CSA because of the variety of things a farm is able to grow, and the extended season with greenhouses. I figure if we end up with extras of anything, I’ll do some canning and freezing for the coming winter. Last year I made vegan pesto out of our basil bunch every time we got one, and ended up with 15 baby food jars of frozen pesto. My kids love it. They are some of those strange children who do not like pasta with tomato sauce, so pesto is important. To make vegan pesto, simply substitute nutritional yeast flakes for parmesan cheese. I honestly can’t tell the difference.

Last week we got our first wonderful box, and this week’s box contents are: Salad Mix, Bunched Arugula, Carrots, Sugar Snap Peas, Red Ace Beets, New Potatoes, Broccoli, Garlic Whistles, Green Cabbage, and Italian Parsley. I’m already salivating over all the good things I am going to make. These veggies are often so fresh that they’re darn good just steamed with butter, salt and pepper. Last week I cooked up some baby turnips that were delicious, and I’m usually not a huge turnip fan. Still, I eat them because I know they’re good for me.

The thing I like best about getting a farmshare CSA each year, is that I can count on getting a very local, very fresh box of vegetables every week for six months out of the year, and it’s like a surprise every week with new things to try. I’m pretty serious about not wasting food, so we eat every veggie that comes our way, and end up eating a variety of things we might not normally think of trying. I also tend to get stuck in a grocery shopping rut, and the weekly menu can get monotonous by the Spring. Not during CSA season! I also like knowing that I’m supporting local farmers. They can plan for the year and not have to get so tight in the spring, because they have folks committed to eating what they’ll grow. Herein lies the one downside to CSA’s, which is having to come up with the lump sum up front. I know all too well that this is not easy when you don’t make a lot of money. Some farms let you pay in installments, and I have even heard of some that let you pay monthly. There are local programs in many communities now that offer assistance to low income families for CSA’s. Our local program, That’s My Farmer, is a partnership between several church communities and farms, which holds fundraisers to provide a number of free CSA shares to families who need it.

One very happy CSA customer took on the project of photographing his weekly box from Groundworks on his blog. Check out the link here, CSA 2008, and prepare to drool over some luscious photos of veggie abundance!