They Are Coming

This week...finally...my CSA starts. The CSA to which I belonged last year started a bit earlier, and I am surprised to find that I actually miss it. I complained at the time about box after box of greens, but this year I find myself buying more greens and even planting lettuce to compensate.

However, I am very excited about my CSA this year, mainly because it has a lot more direct involvement than my previous one. While last year, the convenience could not be beat - pick up a box once a week at a location about 8 minutes from my house - this year I am going a little bit farther to pick up my produce on the actual farm. The procedure was explained at an informal Meet & Greet at the farm last week, where we were able to pick up our membership cards, meet the farmers and key personnel as well as other CSA members and take a walk around the fields. While this CSA is definitely a bit more DIY, I look forward to the weeks when we will have chances to pick a pint of our own strawberries or beans, as well as seeing the people who put in all the hard work in person. I also think that this will be a great activity for my daughter, who is almost one, since it seemed like most of the members also had young children. As she starts walking, I hope she will enjoy walking through the fields with me on our pickup days.

After an extended weekend of eating out and barbecues, I hope to put up some more recipes that focus on the local ingredients available now. My herbs are coming up nicely - we should be able to use some in another week or so and maybe even get our first lettuce harvest. I want to go get a few more seed packets to fill in some gaps (how did I forget rosemary?), plus grab some heirloom tomato plants before they get picked over. We garden almost exclusively in large pots placed on the deck due to the abundance of deer and rabbits that just love to eat all my plantings, but it actually has worked out so far! I would recommend it to anyone - a few big planters, some good soil and a few seed packets will lead to more than you can imagine!

Happy Planting!