Aka weeks 6-12, during which I was lost in a haze of crazy.  Here are the missing weeks of the CSA share.  I love how you can kind of see summer progress – the first tomato, carrots, and potatoes of the year; the changes in color; the changes in berries.

It kind of reminds me of a much smaller version of the guy who took a picture of himself every day for six years.  Only more vegetables.  And a lot less time elapsed.  (I always wish he was smiling for the pictures – he seems so melancholy.  Not like vegetables, which are decidedly cheerful.)

All this food!  Where did the summer go?

Related posts:

1. Our CSA Share – Week 13
2. Our CSA Share – Week 4
3. Our CSA Share – A Weekly

For the last week or so, I’ve been working on getting back on track in my kitchen.  What does that mean?  Digging around in the back of my freezer and my pantry and finishing eating things up!  I’m a little bit of a food hoarder, and while it is comforting to have a couple of jars of tomatoes left “just in case I need them,” preserving season means it’s time to start fresh and new for the coming winter.

But that doesn’t mean the CSA veggies stop coming in and that doesn’t mean the garden stops producing.  Good thing I have a few extra bodies around the house to help me eat up the bounty .

The Share

Potatoes
Green beans
Kohlrabi
Beets
Carrots
Kale
Onion
Summer squash
Blackberries

The Garden

The garden is doing fantastic, in spite of my naiveté in planning it.  (Certainly the squash won’t get big enough to take over the carrots.  I’m sure they’ll be fine wedged in right there.)

This week we have beets, radishes, green and dragon tongue bush beans, rainbow and swiss chard, kale, bok choy, and… no carrots.  The fig tree is also in full fruit, and we’ve been eating fresh figs every day.  We also have a couple of tomatoes just about ready to go.  Yay summer!

The Meal Plan

Eating from the garden has been a new and deeply enjoyable experience for me.  I love that when I make a meal, if it doesn’t look quite green enough, I can just pop outside and bring in anything that looks good.  We’ve been having lots of salads, squashes, and greens along with my random pantry creations.

• Chicken, tomatoes & garlic
• Baked oatmeal
• Homemade yogurt, granola & berries
• Breakfast burritos with sautéed greens
• Salmon, wild rice & garden veggies
• Burgers & cajun fries
• Fig newtons

What’s in your box this week?  Anyone have a good recipe for pickled cherry peppers?  Are you starting to preserve anything for the winter?

Related posts:

1. Our CSA Share – Week 5
2. Our CSA Share – Week 4
3. CSA Share – Week 2

I spoke too soon.  After last week’s declaration that summer weather was finally here, we had an unseasonably rainy July week.  The greens in my garden loved it.  My lawn loved it.  My tomatoes?  Not so much.  No more talking about the weather.

In spite of the rain, we got a great CSA share from the Pigmans this week.  I was excited to see some new flavors – raspberries, cabbage, carrots and sweet onion.  Stir fry is one of my husband’s favorite meals (and mine – so easy to make!).  It’s nice to see some of our usual stir fry ingredients finally turning up.  I’m missing the asparagus this week though.

The Share

Beets
Broccoli
Carrots
Kale
Walla Walla Sweet Onion
Cabbage
Shelling Peas
Raspberries

The Garden

Strawberries (lots!)
Various sprouts

The Meal Plan

I anticipate pulling a bunch of baby greens from the garden this week, as we still need to do a bit of thinning so that everything has room to grow.  I’m really excited about that – this will be the first week where our garden supplements our meals significantly!

• Mixed green salads
• Curried braised cabbage and egg
• Veggie egg rolls
• Baked oatmeal and berries
• Homemade yogurt, granola and berries
• Sourdough pancakes
• Cheeseburgers
• Shredded beef burritos

I’ll probably use the extra garden greens to make a bunch of bird food.  Since we got carrots in our share this week, I don’t anticipate having to pick up any additional veggies from the market or the co-op for that or for our own meals.  I may go to the market and see if there is any asparagus though.  I suspect we’re reaching the end of the season on that, and I still haven’t preserved any of it!

What’s in your box, cart, or bag?  What’s on the menu for the week?

Related posts:

1. Our CSA Share – Week 3
2. Our CSA Share – Week 4
3. CSA Share – Week 2

Summer finally appears to be here!  I’ve gotten so many great comment entries on the permaculture book giveaway – if you haven’t entered yet, go check it out.

Our CSA share was much larger this week, thanks to the warm, sunny days.  When I piled it up on my counter, it almost completely eclipsed the toaster & toaster oven (yes, redundant appliances).

It was great to see the first broccoli of the season.  I’m excited about munching on that, especially since the broccoli plants in our garden are only about 3” tall right now.

However, with all these greens, I’m running out of creative salad ideas.  If you have any good ones (or any other great way to prepare greens), please share with us!

The Share

Asparagus
Broccoli
Lettuce
Beets
Spinach
Strawberry

The Garden

Strawberries, more every day!

The Meal Plan

Taco Salad
Other salads? Time to get creative.
Baked eggs on asparagus
Baked eggs on other veggies?
Kefir-strawberry vanilla smoothies
Berries with homemade yogurt & granola
Carbonara
Pizza

What’s in your box, bag or basket this week?  What’s on the menu?

Related posts:

1. CSA Share – Week 2
2. Our CSA Share – Week 3
3. Our CSA Share – A Weekly

This week’s share was much the same as last week’s – it will probably continue this way until the weather changes. (Come on sun – it’s almost July here!)

This week I was excited to open our bag and find kale!  Kale is a big favorite in my household because my husband absolutely loves Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana.  We eat out more than we should, but we eat at Olive Garden very rarely.  However, I found this great recipe for the soup, and with a few alterations it becomes a fantastically nourishing meal – I substitute homemade chicken bone broth or stock for bouillon cubes, whole raw milk for heavy cream, and make sure to used pastured bacon and sausage.

It’s a great winter soup – there is kale available late into the fall and it starts showing up as soon as the markets open in the spring (this year I’ll be trying to grow my own!), potatoes store well, and we keep a stock of the sausage in the freezer.  I honestly wouldn’t have imagined I’d still be eating it in late June!  That’s ok by me though .

The Share

Strawberries
Mint (many herbs, choice was ours)
Green onions
Kale
Lettuce
Asparagus
Beets

The Garden

One (1!) strawberry.  Hah!

The Meals

We ended up with a lot of leftovers from family and derby shenanigans over the weekend, so there’s lots of eating of those to come.  Otherwise…

• Zuppa Toscana!
• Roast lamb with asparagus and beets (not a repeat, we didn’t end up eating it last week)
• Burrito bowls with veggies
• Salad with veggies & quinoa
• Baked oatmeal and strawberries

I’ll probably also try a shredded beet salad.  Anyone have a good recipe?  Not anticipating any co-op or farmers market supplementary purchases this week – the fridge is packed full!

What’s in your box or garden this week?  What’s on your menu?

Related posts:

1. Our CSA Share – A Weekly
2. My CSA Share – A Breakdown
3. Checking Out Your CSA

This is our second year in a row signing up for a CSA share with Pigman’s Organic Produce Patch.  We signed up for a half share last year, and I was blown away by the quality and value, not to mention the ease that it brought to my weekly shopping and meal planning.

What the heck is a CSA?

A CSA, or community supported agriculture, is basically an easy way to buy farm-direct during the growing season.  With a CSA, you pay an up front fee, usually at the start of the season or some time before the season begins.  The farmers use your share to pay their bills and keep the farm running.  In return, you receive a weekly share of the farm’s product once the season begins.

There are many forms of CSA.  Some (like ours) are single-farm. Some are small farm co-ops that allow a group of farms to offer consumers a wider variety of foods than they can grow themselves.  Some do only vegetables, while others include fruit, herbs and flowers.  There are even meat and dairy CSAs in some areas.  Being a part of a CSA is an affordable and easy way to know where your food comes from.

Our Share

I wrote a bit about our CSA share towards the end of the season last year, and got a lot of questions which were harder to answer than they should have been.  I decided that this year I would do a weekly report of our share with meal lists and photos, to give people an idea of what having a CSA share can be like.  Except we’re starting with Week 3, because that’s where we’re at.

Writing a weekly update might also hold me accountable for using everything, so I don’t end up with things like mustard greens (*cough Week 1 cough*) hanging out in my fridge until they go bad because I haven’t bothered to spend the five minutes it would take on the internet figuring out something to do with them.  My bad.

As the garden comes along, I will probably also include what we pulled from our garden for the week.  It will be interesting to see how the two sources complement each other as the season continues.

Week 3 – The Share

Asparagus
Lettuce
Green Onions
Radish
Sugar Snap Peas
Strawberries (!!)
Garlic Scapes

This is a mid-week picture – we’ve eaten a ton already.  The container of strawberries was full & overflowing.  We’ve eaten all the sugar snap peas, half the asparagus, most of the lettuce, and the radishes (you can see the greens they were attached to in the upper right – the bird and I will eat those this week).  Next week = picture of our whole share before we eat most of it!

Week 3 – The Meals

So excited to see the strawberries this week – the first of the season!  I still have rhubarb from last week’s share, and I might make strawberry rhubarb pie or cobbler, but more likely I will just eat the strawberries and make a plain rhubarb cobbler.

We’re still eating up the freezer veggies from last season, and we have the tail end of canned tomatoes, veggies, salsa, jams, and jalapenos in the pantry.  I ordered half a lamb last season that needs to be eaten soon.  And I just discovered I have two open jars of last season’s salsa in my fridge and I don’t know which one is older, so we do burritos and finish off both of them.

Most likely the plan will look like:

• Spinach (last week’s share)/ lettuce salad with radishes, green onions and quinoa for lunches and on the side of meals
• Snap peas in salads & for snacks
• Roast lamb (garlic scapes) with asparagus & roasted freezer beets
• Burrito bowls – ground beef, last season’s salsa, bell peppers & other last season freezer veggies, lettuce, rice
• Garlic scape pesto pasta
• Rabbit stew or pot pies
• Egg rolls

I’ll probably supplement our CSA share with the following veggies from the farmer’s market or, if the pickings are slim (it’s been a terrible season here), the co-op:

Potatoes (stew)
Sweet potatoes (I’m addicted & the bird eats them)
Carrots
Cabbage

Are you part of a CSA?  If so, what was in your bag/box/crate this week?  Or what are you eating from your garden?

Related posts:

1. My CSA Share – A Breakdown
2. Goodbye, CSA
3. Checking Out Your CSA

On my last post on CSAs, one of you mentioned in the comments that a breakdown of money-paid/food-received in my CSA share would be helpful.  As I mentioned before, I didn’t do a weight/cost thing each week, which would have been particularly useful for this post.  However, part of the reason I never did this was because the amount of food we received was a) above and beyond what was expected and b) easily exceeded the amount of food we would have gotten for the same dollar figure at the farmers market.  That missing data aside, here’s what we’re left with for this year’s CSA share.

How Much Did It Cost?

There were several options for our CSA share this year:

Regular and extended FarmShare – $600

Regular season FarmShare – $500

Regular and extended HalfShare – $360

Regular season HalfShare – $300

If you signed up and paid your bill before April 18th (we did), you got a $10 discount.  We signed up for a HalfShare – according to the brochure a HalfShare is a good fit for 1-2 people while a FarmShare will feed three or more.  We will definitely stick with a HalfShare next year.  However, based on our selection of food this year, I do plan to plant certain things to supplement the selection (peas, beans, tomatoes, strawberries, cilantro, basil, and dill, in case anyone is wondering).

How Long Does It Last?

The answer to this question will most certainly depend on your individual farm and certainly on your region and growing season.  We signed up for the Extended HalfShare this year.  Regular season ran for 20 weeks, beginning the first week in June.  The Extended option continued on for several more weeks, and the last week was a double share with a large selection of storage vegetables.

What Do You Get?

Again, this is going to vary depending on your farm, your area, and how the season goes.  This was a weird year for Western Washington, and our CSA share was a little weird as a result.  So was the farmers market and my backyard, so there’s not much to be said about that.  We were heavy on slicing cucumbers, light on tomatoes and peppers.  To be honest, I never want to see a cucumber again (until next year, I guess).

Photo CC || http://www.flickr.com/photos/chickenthistlefarm – Not mine, but easily could have been.

Our weekly shares this year included asparagus, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, artichokes, chard, lettuce, spinach, carrots, rhubarb, peas, beans, strawberries, raspberries, marion berries, blueberries (omg they were so good), melon, cabbage, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, onions, kohlrabi, garlic, brussel sprouts, corn, potatoes and a variety of herbs.  I’m sure I missed something – there were so many veggies!

Each week we got approximately one brown grocery bag full of veggies.  Typically, there was an assortment of five or so different veggies and a choice of one type of berry and herb.  The quantities and typed varied depending on the month.  For example, at the beginning of the season, we typically got two bunches of lettuce per bag.  There was no lettuce at all in our last bag.  At the beginning of the corn season, we got two ears.  This last bag, we got six!  It’s kind of like Christmas – every bag is a surprise .

Cost / Time = Worth It?

Dividing total cost by week comes out to $14.50 a week for our CSA share.  That is almost certainly less than I would have spent for the same veggies at the farmers market.  Not reflected in the price is the time and gas saved because I didn’t have to go to the farmers market every week.  In fact, I would say I only went to the market on average once or twice a month.  Our CSA share also included a 5% discount at the farm’s booth at the market, so I saved a little bit of money that way as well.

While there were some fruits and veggies I missed and some I felt like I had in excess, the convenience of having everything right there in the bag more than made up for the selection.  The variety encouraged me to try new things, learn new recipes, and eat more broadly than I would under ordinary circumstances.

The Verdict

Saving money + sustainably grown + healthy food + support local farmers = win + win + win + win.

CSA = win.

Related posts:

1. Goodbye, CSA
2. Checking Out Your CSA

My CSA share will be ending in a few weeks and I never got around to writing my “just joined a CSA” post.  But this is goodbye, at least until next year when it picks back up again.  We have a couple more loads of storage vegetables and then we’re hunkering down for the winter.  Which is good, because it’s getting cold here!

My CSA

This year I was a CSA member with Pigman’s Organic Produce Patch.  A mere six miles from my house, it definitely fits the criteria for local.  The certified organic is a bonus, but wouldn’t have been a requirement for me.  FDA organic certification is an expensive process, and many small farmers simply cannot afford it.  A common phrase in the sustainable agriculture circle is “beyond organic,”  and that is the kind of farm the Pigman’s run.

But the main reason I went with the Pigman’s was word of mouth recommendation – my neighbors have had a CSA share with them for several years running and love it.  That was enough for me.  (There is much to be said for minimizing time and research by connecting with people you trust.  Community > going it alone.)

So. Much. Food.

This was a terrible season for western Washington.  Everyone agrees on that.  That being said, my CSA share was incredible.  I got way more food than I imagined I would and some weeks was hard pressed to eat it all.  And although I never tracked it, I know that the monthly breakdown of cost was far less than if I had bought the same food at the farmers market.

I also ended up with an incredible variety of food that I simply never would have selected if left to my own devices.  Kohlrabi, anyone?  Beets and beet greens?  Who knew that these things could be so tasty!  Having them show up in my farmshare meant learning new recipes and trying new things.  While some people might view that as one of the downsides of a CSA share, for me it was a real bonus.  I like not having to pick my vegetables each week, and I like being forced to try new things.

Photo CC || http://www.flickr.com/photos/galant

Saves Time, Saves Gas

Did I mention the farm is just six miles from my house?  Did I mention that my neighbors are also members of this CSA share?  Hurray for carpooling veggies!

I could go to the market each week and pick out my fruits and vegetables, and I would most likely come home with a wider selection.  But I would spend so much more time, money and gas in the process.  And on the rare occasion that I do head to the market for something specific, I am always surprised to discover that I really don’t want to pick out produce, compare prices, and make decisions.

What can I say – I like things easy.  And a CSA share is produce made easy.

Find A CSA

We’re heading into winter now, but that means it’s the perfect time to locate a CSA near you for next year.  The bulk payment is a deterrent for some people, but if you start now, you have time to start squirreling away that chunk of money.  You can also look for a farm that is willing to work out a payment system.

Check at your local farmers market and with your foodie friends.  They might have a recommendation for a great CSA.  Otherwise, you can always look online on sites like Local Harvest, Ecovian, Green People, etc.  Just start Googling and see what you can find!

As for me, I’m sticking with the Pigmans next year.  How many days until spring?  Anyone?

Related posts:

1. Checking Out Your CSA