[femalephish]

My mom and I are thinking about joining a CSA this summer. (It wouldn't start up here until June) What do you guys think? I feel like all those veggies would help encourage me to cook more and it's REALLY an affordable way to get organic veggies. (plus I'm going to have a baby, so it would be a nice way for my mom and I to have a weekly 'date' to hang out, have her see the baby and cook together, you know?)
Anyone getting one? Anyone do it last year? Did you love it? Did you have lots of leftover veggies?

Thanks.

 

[karne]

For me, the affordability has become the big question this year. If it's affordable, and you'll use what you get than it's a great idea. Great way to support your local farmer and economy.

 

[kiwiva]

I'm doing one for the 3rd year in a row. I love it because it forces me to use veggies I would otherwise never think to buy.

Sometimes we had a lot, it totally depends on the weather. You can never have too many tomatoes and zucchini though, those and many other things are freezable.

 

[cristeen]

I joined one in the fall because of the affordability factor. They turned out to be more affordable than buying it from the market myself. It is more than we can eat on average (I get a box every other week). But I love it.

 

[dogmom327]

I joined one and am splitting a share with another family. It's $12.50 a week (my portion) and I get a $.50 discount on the eggs I already buy from them. I don't know yet how much yield it will be but I hear it's a lot. I'm doing a garden too but I'm still a gardening novice and we're in a new house this year so I'm unsure of how that will work out.

 

[carfreemama]

We're in Nova Scotia, Canada and our CSA started 2 weeks ago. A full share will cost us $30/wk plus $3/wk city delivery.

Our box on Tuesday contained:
-couple pounds potatoes
-about 8 cups cubed butternut squash
-about 16 apples
-4 lb carrots
-1 large green cabbage
-1 large turnip
-2 huge parsnips
-3 radishes, the first of the spring!
-pussywillows

The box before that also contained 2 pints of greenhouse-grown local cherry tomatoes. Got to have them again! It also had winter-storage pears, which were great. There are probably a few things I'm forgetting.

We pick up at our local food coop, which we are part of, so it's a great little social hub. I wasn't sure if this was your first baby; one thing to think about is whether you will have the energy to be creative about having lots of food you aren't used to cooking in great quantities. I'm behind on my squash-cooking, for example; but I will have time to puree and freeze it over the weekend. OTOH, if delivery is at a central and convenient spot for you, it could save you lots of time and in some ways it makes the decision about what to cook FOR you. And the social time you talked about with your mom and new baby sounds great. Not to mention getting your little one started off with the best food out there!

 

[violets8]

I joined a CSA and our first pick up is 4/22. The last pick up is teh second week of November. I paid $250 for half a share which is 5-10 lbs. of organic produce a week. I am so so so excited. This is my first experience with a CSA. I am looking forward to eating locally grown foods.

 

[mommajb]

Last year was the first year we had one availale to us and I did join. Overall it was a good experience. There were a few weeks I thought I could have done better with the money at the farmer's market and no week where I felt like the difference was made up. We did a full share which is for a family of 4. We are a vegetarian family of seven and only had leftovers once. See the cabbage issue below.

Dh wants me to simply earmark the money and spend it at the market myself. Sounds good in theory but
1. I like being a part of something like the CSA
2. having made the commitment money-wise I am very good about picking up my share (and might skip the farmers market if it was raining or something
3. It did stretch my boundaries and I was able to try a couple of different veggies

reasons why it would work
1. I would never put myself in the situation where I have 8 heads of cabbage on hand.

2. I almost missed a couple of pickups and it made me so upset to have wasted the money (I had friends pick i t up and use it when we were gone. Delivery is $5 /week and I am not willing to pay it.)

Anyway have fun, my deadline is still a couple of weeks away.

 

[BetsyS]

Last year, I chose to set aside the money and go to the farmers' market instead, which is what I'm doing again this year.

We find that, in the two CSAs that we've been a part of, we don't get enough food. I'm not sure if we're extremely big eaters (probably) or if we had smallish CSAs (probably also part of it), but we had to supplement the CSA with the farmers' market. Since our pick-up was on a different day, that left me with a commitment to go get our food 2 days out of the week.

I prefer doing it all in one day. The farmers' market works better for that. Last year, I missed 2 Saturdays, and one of those was when I was in the hospital giving birth.

It is kind of a pain, but so was the CSA pickup.

I do try to buy some of all the produce offered by my favorite farmer, so that I'm getting a nice variety, and I try to never have a week where I just buy potatoes and beans, for instance. I get at least one of everything, to make sure that we're stretching ourselves and eating a huge variety. I even buy kale sometimes (which we don't love), at the peak of the season, and I figure out ways to incorporate it into our diet. I don't buy 8 of them, though. LOL

 

[tbone_kneegrabber]

We do a CSA all year, a spring/summer, a fall, and a winter one. The pick up is at the farmer's market, which is 3 blocks from our house. Its not enough for all week (we are 6 adults and 1 child) but its a start. I like it because you have to eat it, so if you wouldn't normally buy a hubbard squash, you now have to figure out a way to eat it. I think its kinda fun.

 

[veganf]

Yep, this will be our 5th year I think. We have to renew in October for the following year because they are always sold out by January.
Love it!

 

[cristeen]

Some of you are saying your shares are small... this is what we get every 2 weeks, to give you some idea. Items change, but overall volume holds pretty steady (during the winter) - we haven't gotten to the summer produce yet, but I hear they're even bigger in summer. This is all organic, mostly local (during the summer it will be entirely local - they ship in apples for the winter), and costs us $31.50/wk.

This is the delivery for tomorrow - we're already into spring veggies:
1.5 lb Russian Banana Potato
1 lb Green Asparagus
1 bu Red Chard
1 bu Bunched Collard
1 lb Green Zucchini
1 bu Nantes Carrot
1 bu Red Radish
1 bu Green Onion
.75 lb Baby Mixed Lettuce, head
.25 lb Green Garlic

2 lb Cameo Apple
2 lb Navel Citrus, orange
2 lb Minneola Tangelo Citrus, orange
2 cnt Ruby Citrus, grapefruit
2 lb Fuji Apple
1.5 lb Red D'Anjou Pear
1 lb Fresh Kiwi
1 cnt (pint) Strawberries
1 lb Blood Orange Citrus, orange

ETA - I guess I should say that's 2 weeks worth of produce. There's no way we could go through that in a week - and we're having trouble with the fruit, we've been getting 6# of citrus each box for the last couple months and it's coming out our ears.

 

[simcon]

We love our CSA; we are in a rural area and pick up is at the farm, and it's a big social event with our community (there's a creek to swim in in the summer, etc.--people hang out for a couple of hours). Last year was our first year, and we split the share with my mom--this year we are each getting our own share because we could have eaten it all last year. One great thing is that the veggies are so fresh that they last a long time (the CSA is closer than any farmer's market to us, though the CSA farm also sells at all the local farmers' markets, so I had gotten their produce before).

I also like the challenge of cooking different things, but have found that you can pretty much make a quiche or frittata with just about anything and a bit of cheese (if you do eggs and dairy), so that's my default with things I'm otherwise at a loss with. Or steam things and make them into a salad (steamed kohlrabi and horseradish--yum!)

 

[Llyra]

We've gone back to our CSA; this will be our fourth year. We actually considered buying an extra share this year, because we've been able to freeze and can so much and eat it all through the off-season.

And yeah, it can change the way you cook and eat. The first year, a lot of it went to waste, because I had no idea how to cook some of it, and I wasn't used to cooking from scratch and using so many veggies. We were still mostly living on packaged stuff and junk. Now, I couldn't imagine ever eating like that again. It's also led us into home gardening, and home preserving, and lots of other neat interests like that.

If you learn how to freeze and/or can what you can't use right away, very little needs to go to waste. The only thing we don't use up all the time is lettuce-- one week our share had six heads of it, and my kids at that time couldn't/wouldn't eat lettuce. So I wound up sharing with the neighbors a few times.

 

[chinaKat]

We're doing our third CSA this year. We are changing farms this year for one that is a little closer and better organized than our old one. We love the variety, the local organics, and fact that we're forced to think outside of the "broccoli or beans tonight?" box we get stuck in otherwise.

We freeze extras and are still using a few frozen things from last summer/fall in early April -- soup greens, scallions, butternut squash. And my very last apple in the root cellar was eaten yesterday (okay there was one more left but it went bad, lol).

I definitely love the CSA concept and will happily yammer on about it to anybody that will listen.

 

[catnip]

I've done a CSA in the past, but I really prefer to just shop the farmer's market and buy what I know I will use.

 

[Phoenix_Rising]

We bought a share this year for $425. Our season will start in mid-June and will end toward the last part of October. It is a lot of food! We got half a share last year and had a good amount of food most weeks. I think we'll be freezing quite a bit of it this year and canning many many pounds of tomatoes

 

[artemis33]

Yes! This will be our first year.

We recently moved to a somewhat rural area from the city. In the city I had such great convenient access to local produce (several farmer's markets and a local HFS coop) I didn't choose to commit to the CSAs.

However once moving here I discovered that a woman right down the road (less than 2 miles away) operates a small CSA and I managed to get a spot. It starts up in May. She sells eggs year round and I've been buying those already - they are lovely! As part of the CSA we get a 1/2 dozen eggs a week but we go through way more than that so I know we'll be buying extras. We also get a bouquet of flowers!

I'm very excited to do this and since the farm is so close I'm not at all concerned about it being inconvenient. I will still attend the local farmer's markets as well when they start up to supplement if needed, to scout out some local meat sources and mostly just for the ritual. DD and I love browsing the market, buying some kind of treat and just hanging out - so I don't want to give that up even though I'll be getting most of my produce from the CSA.

We are also having a big garden, but I plan to freeze/can any surpluses this year to help see us through the winter. I'm so ready for spring!!!

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