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Friday morning I picked up our second to last week’s worth of CSA produce for this year.  You might remember me mentioning our CSA a time or two here on the blog but I never fully explained it.  CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  Participants pay a set amount of money and receive produce every week for a set amount of weeks.  The produce is grown locally, harvested in season, and organic (most CSA’s do not use chemicals but cannot afford the official USDA Organic Seal so it’s “unofficially organic”).  CSAs supports local farming and environmentally-friendly farming.

Our CSA lasts 25 weeks (May – November) and costs us $440 (we signed up to work 8 hours on the farm which reduced the cost from the original $495).  It was so much fun to pick up our produce bag every week and see what surprises were inside.  This past year I cooked so many new veggies I never would have bought in the store.  We got to cook kohlrabi, bok choy, parsnips, fennel, and so much else.

Check out our bag from this past week:

We received turnips, kale, sweet potatoes, bok choy, collard greens, garlic, and that big ol’ thing at the bottom of the picutre?

It’s a huge parsnip!!!  We’ve gotten them before but this bad boy was big!!!  Hmmm maybe parsnip fries will be on the menu this week?

Our CSA grew a huge assortment of veggies, herbs, and one fruit – watermelon.  All CSAs differ in what they offer:  some offer only veggies, others might not grow herbs, or some might offer more fruit.  But you can guarantee that everything they grow is local which helps the environment by reducing transportation pollution and is harvested fresh.

I cannot recommend joining a CSA enough.  Sure there were some weeks when we would buy certain veggies at the grocery store but overall we relied on the produce we picked up from the farm.  It was great knowing that we were eating the freshest, most natural produce we could get.  No worrying about chemicals, genetically modified food, or mass-produced “vegetables”.

We keep it real folks :)