Our CSA haul – a new weekly series beginning soon

One of my recent resolutions is to blog more frequently here at Yonked.com.  I’ve been blogging three or four times a week at StephanieSchwab.com, and I’m finding that now that I’m writing regularly it seems easier to commit to more frequent posts here as well.  So I’m planning on a weekly series of posts about our CSA haul – that is, the weekly bounty that we receive from our Community Supported Agriculture program.  I plan to share photos and links to recipes and perhaps original recipes as well. Our CSA will make its first delivery either next week or the week after, depending on the first harvest; my posts will start as soon as the season starts.

But first, a few words about our CSA experience.  We’ve been members of our current CSA, Hawthorne Valley Farm, for three years now, and CSA members for five years total.  Adam and I are big fans of the CSA concept for a variety of reasons, including:

• Cutting down on the grocery shopping, as we always have fresh food in the house,
• Lower costs for local, organic fruits and veggies,
• The excitement of not knowing what we’re going to get week-to-week, and the fun of figuring out what to do with it,
• And, of course, that everything is so yummy!  It’s fresh as fresh can get, given that we live in an urban jungle and not on the farm.

We pick up weekly in Riverdale, which is about 10 minutes from us, and the CSA pickup point is conveniently located next to a great playground, so Aaron will be pretty happy with that.  Our share entitles us to whatever the farm has available in the weeks from mid-June until late October.  There are some weeks we don’t get much, and lots of weeks when we can’t possibly eat everything we get and we freeze stuff or share it with friends.  When we’re out of town we ask friends to pick up and eat our share.

Over the years we’ve had our share (no pun intended) of disappointments – the CSA we joined our first year (which was also their first year) only gave us a single radish and a single cucumber for weeks on end, and last year a huge rain wiped out many crops and we had a pretty sparse midsummer.  But we’ve also been exposed to new veggies (garlic scapes, anyone?), had a sorcerers’ apprentice experience with corn one year (it just wouldn’t stop coming!), and had some really funny adventures with our CSA haul.

Please tune in next week or the week after to hear about our first delivery.  I look forward to sharing with you!