Week 1 of our CSA!

Eating locally this summer is going to be made much easier by our subscription to a local CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  This type of program has really been expanding over the past decade or so, all across the country.  As a member of a CSA you pay an upfront fee and every week you’re provided with a box of fresh produce!  CSAs come in all different shapes and sizes, so let me tell you a little more about ours.

We did some research and looked at a number of different local farms and talked with some of our friends who have done CSAs in the past.  We ended up selecting Willie Green’s Organic Farm in Monroe, WA, which is less than 30 miles from Bellevue, where both Pam and I live.  Not only is it super close by (at some point we’re going to go visit!), but they fill their CSA boxes with only local produce.  Some other CSAs like to supplement their local produce with things from elsewhere, like California, or even overseas, sometimes without really even telling their customers.  All of Willie Green’s produce is either grown on their farm or occasionally comes from one of their local partners, all of which are within Washington.  The produce is all grown organically and picked no earlier than the day before it is delivered, which minimizes the nutrients lost before consumption.

So, we decided to sign up for a small share, which we will receive every week all the way into October.  This will be fun because it’ll introduce us to all sorts of new things that we haven’t tried and force us to learn how to cook with them!  We’ll be receiving our first share this Friday, and we found out a couple days ago what’s going to be in it:

• Salad Mix ½ lb;
• Spinach ½ lb;
• Rapini 1 bunch;
• Carrots 1 bunch;
• Turnips 1 bunch;
• Baby Head Lettuce 4 each;
• Bok Choy 1 bunch

When I look at this, my first reaction was, “What the heck is rapini?”  Turns out it’s kind of like little broccoli heads with some leaves.  Cool.  Now just need to figure out what to do with it!  And the turnips too!  We’ll see what we can come up with!  For all of this we paid the equivalent of roughly $19.44 (we bought 16 weeks of boxes!!), and if we were to get this from one of their stands at a farmers market, we would pay $28.50!  Boo-yah!

Needless to say we’re very excited for this first installment, and we’ll keep you updated on what it looks like and what we end up making out of it!

 

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Friday, June 17, 2011 – UPDATE

I just picked up our first Willie Green’s CSA Box!!  Yay!!  Here’s what it looks like, lots of yummy greens:

I got it home and went through everything, excited to see just what all we had.  And I couldn’t resist, I had to make something real quick to put it to good use, so I made a salad using some of the salad mix as well as some spinach, topped with chopped carrots plus some green onions I still had.  Then I made a little vinaigrette with blackberry juice (from frozen blackberries that were picked last year at my parent’s house), a little bit of olive oil, and some fresh thyme.  It was delicious!  The first of many fun dishes to come this summer!