Community Supported Agriculture Weeks 1-3

We decided to join a CSA this year due to our second child being, well, due.

Community Supported Agriculture (what I refer to as the CSA) is basically when members of the community pay a farmer to do the work and we all share in the "profits". We each get a share of crops once a week. This year we began 3 weeks ago in May and will hopefully make it all the way to Thanksgiving which should include some storage crops such as potatoes, onions, and squash.  There is also risk associated with this as if the farmers don't do well because of unforeseen issues such as weather we don't get our money back.  It's a give and take.

From previous experience, having a child toward the beginning of May makes it very difficult to get the garden weeded, tilled, planted, and kept up. So we started looking for other alternatives as we prefer homegrown to picked-way-too-early-shipped-from-Chile produce (Will I eat it if it's the only thing available and I want strawberries? Sure.) We normally have a variety of crops in our larger backyard garden but this year only planted broccoli for freezing and Roma tomatoes for canning.  Oh, and don't forget the seemingly endless supply of thistles I am battling...

So I found two options here in smallish-town, USA. Although the one was already out of business I found a great one just within the limits of where we were willing to drive. The Sippel Family Farm
seemed like a great fit for us. 


I wish I would have thought of this three weeks ago but I have decided I wanted to keep track of the produce to see how we fare at the end of the year. I will take photos of the rest of the weeks, but for today I will have to just write it down. Baby brain makes you do things like this sometimes...


May 16th, 2012

Green Garlic
Lettuce - Mesclun Mix
Turnips


May 23rd, 2012

Lettuce - Mesclun Mix
Turnips
Kale

May 30th, 2012

Carrots
Kale
Lettuce - Green Leaf - 2 Heads
Cilantro

I have really enjoyed the challenge of using all of the produce in the week.  So far I have only wasted a bit of lettuce because there has been a LOT! It has also really limited my grocery bill and time spent shopping.  Score!

We are looking forward to see what the rest of the season has in store for us.