does anyone participate in a csa program?

Yes! My girlfriend and I did it last year, and we’ve just signed up for one this year. The experience was excellent. One caveat, and this depends on your regular consumption of vegetable matter, it can be a little overwhelming. We had to really work to keep up with the weekly box. In fact, we were having weekly dinner parties for 10–15 people just to make sure we used it all!

wow that’s amazing! @ mangus.
i want to so badly.
in a few months after i move i’ll hopefully be growing my own!

what is a CSA program?

@deepseas72 it stands for Community Supported/Sustained Agriculture. People subscribe to weekly shipments of produce directly from the farm, so there is no middleman. The farms will either deliver the box to your home or to a pick-up site.

Yes- I live in San Francisco and have subscribed to a CSA for the past 3 years. I love it! They deliver directly to my office, and I can change the size of my order each week so that if I’m leaving town for part of the week I don’t get overwhelmed with too much produce that I won’t have time to cook. The quality is amazingly fresh and I love knowing that I“m supporting local farmers. I also order eggs from them each week and they are the freshest, best eggs I’ve ever had. Don’t know where you live, but the one that I subscribe to in the bay area is called http://www.eatwiththeseasons.com
If you can get a group of 4 co-workers together, they will deliver right to your office.
I love going to the farmers’ market too, but the great thing about a CSA is that since you have a shipment every week, you have to use it, so you end up incorporating a lot more fresh organic tasty food into your diet and cooking a lot more too…so I feel healthier as a result.

@occ: i’m in ohio. i think my only choice right now is new century csa. they have a slightly higher rate to deliver, but will drop off wherever you want. i am really trying to eat better, more veggies, etc. and i like that this will be local and organic. i am a little concerned that it will be overwhelming and by the third or fourth week i’ll be so sick of produce that most of it’ll go to waste :( new century doesn’t offer eggs, but you can add fruit (raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, peaches) and you can swap out vegetables you don’t like for more of something you do like.

Yes indeed. I am a workshare member of a CSA in Austin, TX. This means that every Saturday my partner and I go out to the farm to help bring in the harvest, and in return we get a share of the veggies. We get an amazing variety, and it is great fun too!

The most common reason people are dissatisfied is with a CSA is that they feel that they get too much produce. This can make you feel like you are being wasteful. We find that one share is enough to feed at least 3 people for a week (though this varies depending on the time of year) so we share with a friend.

Check out local harvest to find a CSA near you!

Hi Surlygirl, did you give it a try? What do you think?
If you’re feeling overwhelmed with produce, one trick is freeze stuff you can’t eat, like berries, or make soups out of the veggies and freeze those. Also, it’s a good excuse to have friends over for dinner and cook them a healthy feast!

@occ: sorry! i forgot i needed to respond to this. i did sign up, but don’t get my first delivery until may. i’ll keep you posted!

update: i have had three deliveries. they were supposed to begin in may, but with the wet cooler weather things weren’t quite ready. it has been a bit challenging to eat all of the produce and we have thrown bits of things out. we are definitely getting our fill of salad! not really sure what else to do with our lettuce. we are still experimenting with kohlrabi. our strawberries and raspberries were excellent. we have ended up with way too many green onions. but overall, it has been great fun and well worth the price. looking forward to what the next two months will bring!

My partner & I joined a year-round CSA in Portland, OR. We’re just starting to get the hang of it (this is our 5th week), but the routine we’ve used so far is to set aside an hour or so on the night of our delivery (Tuesdays) to do prep.

We open a beer/bottle of wine and get to work washing, choping, & preping all the veggies for the week. That way we’ve got salad greens ready to pack in lunches & vegetables ready to stir fry or throw in the steamer.

So far it’s worked- we’ve found that we’re more likely to use stuff at the end of a long day if we aren’t faced with a massive prep job (otherwise, we reach for the take-out menu).

I’ve been using a really good cookbook to help figure out how to prep unfamiliar vegetables. It’s simply called “Vegetables.”

Enjoy!