Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)

Elly and I decided to subscribe to a CSA this year. For those of you not familiar with a CSA, the concept is pretty simple. You pay an upfront fee at the beginning of the summer to a farm. In return you receive a weekly basket of food that they produced for around 20 weeks over the growing season. There are various types of CSAs, such as veggie, fruit, bread, meat. Usually, the harvest is light in the beginning and at the end, and heavy in the middle. You share the risk with the farmer that if it is a bad year you get less, but if it is a good year you make out well. Our experience in past years has financially worked out really well, especially since we eat tons of vegetables.

We subscribed to a veggie and bread CSA with Frijolito Farm. This is an urban farm that is run by a small family. They are trying to minimize ecological impact by growing vegetables in the city near the consumers. It is their first year running a CSA, which makes this a little riskier. In return for $575, we will be receiving a weekly basket with vegetables and a fresh loaf of bread.

We were part of a CSA a few years ago when we lived in Pittsburgh. It is fun because you never really know when you are going to get each week. We were forced to try new vegetables and really expanded our horizons when trying to figure out how to use some uncommon items.

This past Friday we picked up our first basket. As expected, it was pretty light. It contained beet greens, radishes, mulberrys, and a loaf of Italian bread.