Community Supported Agriculture and Seasonal Eating

So, here's where I sheepishly admit that I messed up my dates, and our CSA doesn't actually start until June 17th. Whoops!

To tide you over, let's talk about CSAs and what they are. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and many people think that it is one of the best ways forward for our family farms and farmers. In a CSA, you essentially buy a share of a local farmer's crop in advance. The farmer uses that money to buy seed, farm equipment, whatever, and you get a weekly share of whatever is ripe at that farm during the growing season. The advantage to CSAs is that they are often less expensive than buying at farmers' markets, the produce generally travels less than 50 miles from farm to your fridge, and many CSA farmers use organic methods. As well, you're supporting local family farmers and helping them keep agricultural spaces in an increasingly suburban and urban world.

The primary disadvantage is that, like a garden, a CSA forces you to eat seasonally. Seasons are different all over the US, but here in Northern Virginia, for example, it means that our first CSA delivery is going to be primarily greens, broccoli, and some herbs. Tomatoes don't start until sometime in July, and the greens will close to being over by then, so salads will have to be more creative then lettuce and tomatoes. As a consumer culture, we've gotten used to being able to have whatever we want whenever we want it -- strawberries in February, tomatoes in April, lettuce in August. We find recipes and then shop to buy the ingredients. Eating seasonally means that we'll be getting our ingredients and then finding recipes to use them in. Joe and I are actually excited by this prospect! This is going to challenge our creativity as cooks in a way that we find enormously interesting. Joe, of course, is going to be taking point on a lot of the recipe creativity, but I'll be doing my part and documenting the whole thing.

Our CSA is Bull Run Mountain Farm