We joined a CSA

So, the coop is now down to one group that gets food every other Saturday. I'm stunned that when 3 families (with children) split a share it was too much food where for just us (2 adults and a 5yo) it's not nearly enough. I mean, it's worth the $49--it's just not enough. When I had two groups getting food almost a week apart, we could just take a share on each delivery. That's no longer the case.

So we joined a CSA farm. This is where you pay a fee to "join" the farm and each week you get a share of the farm's harvest. In this area, a lot of the farm shares are sold out by March. But we re-joined our former CSA--the Cook (Rutgers) Student Organic Farm. You have to drive out to the farm to pick up your food on Thursday afternoon/evening or Friday morning. Many of the other CSAs here in NJ offer a local pickup point much like my coop members have for the coop.

So we got ourselves in just under the gun to pickup for the first time today. YAY!!! So that will be every week to supplement what we get through the coop. I'm hoping it won't be overkill. We'll see. I'm heavily armed with Green Bags. I love that it's local produce but I live in NJ--so growing season isn't year-round. And you don't get the same amount or variety of fruit that you can get with the coop.

Today's CSA pickup included:

2 large handfuls of mesclun mix
2 handfuls of lettuce
1 nice bunch of kale (so, a little more than needed to feed Mike and I for 1 meal, or to feed us for 2 meals if we don't have HUGE portions. Matthew is a non-kale eater due to texture)
1 bunch of scallions (no clue what I'm doing with these yet)
1 bunch of turnips that looked like radishes
1 handful of pea shoots (pretty flowers that you can eat!)

There was a sign to take as much lemon balm and sage as we could use. I skipped the sage, but saw that lemon balm was good for headaches and tension... Mike and I looked at each other and proced to take about 6-7 whole stems of it and are brewing some tea as we speak. Wish we'd taken more!

I love this CSA. I especially loved the newsletters--which were written in true college kid style, as if for the eyes of their own. By the end of the summer, we knew who was involved in a romance, who had no chance of EVER being involved in a romance, who slacked off (lovingly) on the farm, who drank too much, etc. Having never met any of them, we grew to love them week by week through stories, recipes and occasional veggie haiku.

I'm glad we got in this year. :)