CSA: Week One

Yay! I have been waiting for this for weeks and it is finally here! About a month ago I joined the local CSA. A CSA is short for Community Shared Agriculture. Basically people buy "shares" in a community farm and in return get a weekly assortment of goods grown on the farm. My farm is Taproot Farms. I am very excited to try this whole CSA business and hopefully every week I will get to share with you my adventures in farming from my bed.

How Taproots's CSA works is every Monday there is an email detailing what is going on at the farm and a list of what will be included in this week's deliveries. On Tuesday there is a two hour window for pickups from 4:30-6:30 at The Grainery. Today was my first pickup and round trip took me one hour and twelve minutes. Yikes. The walk there was lovely: it wasn't really raining and it smelled fantastic (I went up Spring Garden, then right at the Gardens and followed that until I hit The Grainery which takes you past the Citadel and lots of green). The walk there was exactly a half hour.

Here is the super fun part: as soon as I picked up my share, from a very nice girl, it started to POUR. Like we are now in a rain warning pour.  Another annoying fact: before I left I hemmed and hawed over bringing my own bags but looked at the website and everything was in these lovely blue canvas boxes with handles so I decided against bringing my own, I mean it was my first time and I didn't want to look like an idiot. FALSE. I got there and everything is in cardboard boxes. So it is pouring and I have at least a half hour walk ahead of me with a freaking cardboard box? Of course. Is anyone surprised? Oh, and I have to return the box so I can't just let it get destroyed in the rain. It is at this point that I am super happy I brought my umbrella.

Enough complaining, here is my haul:

my box... whoops

the biggest green onion I have ever seen

a bag of mixed greens

Kale

Beet Greens

carrots and strawberries (!)

cilantro

 So overall I am fairly pleased with this CSA business. I hope that I will always be able to pick up my share, but if I can't then it gets donated. I am super happy that I got strawberries this week. Turns out I hate cilantro - it tastes like soap (am I alone in this?). I cannot wait to make Kale Chips and I already used 1/2 my onion in tonight's dinner. So here's to week one and I hope to have many more.