Five Reasons to Join a CSA & Four Recommendations {Friday Five}

I appear to be cursed by evil computer spirits - my brand new laptop, to replace a laptop that died in November, stopped functioning this week. I was prepared to write about our first venison, food not lawns, and winter chickens this week. Instead, because I am sharing time on the family computer, you get a (relatively) quick and dirty post. Be back soon...I hope?

The CSA (Community Support Agriculture) model is one that most people shopping the farmers' are familiar with: for an annual price paid to the farmer, you pick up a weekly share of the harvest. Though it may seem early to think about summer tomatoes, farmers are pouring over seed catalogs and CSAs are already filling.

Five Reasons to Join a CSA

1) CSA shares include the cream of the crop. Farmers truly want to satisfy their customers and usually choose the best produce for their loyal CSA customers. You'll get the freshest picked, highest quality selection every week.

2) No worries about selling out or cash. Thanks to growing demand for local foods, many farmers sell out of their most popular items. A CSA guarantees you the primo vegetables without concern about the timing of pickup or having enough cash to make your purchases. Sleep in - your CSA share will be available.

3) Healthier eating. It's harder to throw away a vegetable that's languished when you've seen the farmers' well-worn hands and noticed their sleepy eyes. You feel obliged to eat or preserve the food more than when you buy anonymously-raised produce at the grocery. Usually, this results in incorporating more vegetables into your diet, which is always beneficial.

4) The varied selection is a culinary challenge. Because CSA farmers know they must have something to share every week, they plant a wide variety of crops. If there wasn't enough rain in a given week for fat peas, the share will include daikon radishes. For a curious eater or experienced cook, this mystery bag of ingredients is a way to expand your cooking methods and palate, all while appreciating the challenges nature throws at farmers. There are no meal planning ruts for CSA shareholders because every week contains a new variety of vegetables.

5) A CSA purchase provides valuable stability to an otherwise manic business. The farmers I know are truly working for a love of earth and good food, not a love of money. The cost of land, equipment, labor, soil, and seeds is barely enough to allow for a modest income, and what does come in is usually highly seasonal. Operating a CSA allows farmers to earn income when they most need it in the beginning of the season for start-up costs and provides a guarantee that some or most of their produce will go to willing customers.

Central Ohio 2013 CSA Recommendations

Sippel Family Farm - I bought produce from Ben and Lisa all summer last year and their food is top notch. All grown on their farm, the vegetables and fruit (apples!) are produced without synthetic chemicals through smart seed selection, crop rotation, use of compost, and meticulous labor. They offer a full share for $680 (can be split into five payments) and pickup locations in Clintonville, Worthington, Westerville or the farm. You can see a bit of the farm in my Kokoborrego Cheese Tour.

 Bird's Haven Farms - Located in Granville, Ohio, Bird's Haven is run by a family of well-educated young farmers backed by the experience of their parents. Bryn and Lee, brother and sister, grow everything they sell (ask farmers about this - some supplement with auction produce) using sustainable practices like high tunnels, hand-weeding, compost, and physical weed suppression. Their CSA offers a stunning array of options from a small 11-week share of produce for $208.55 to a 'little bit more' full 21-week share for $550.96 with coffee, bread, eggs, cheese, meat, and grains optional add-on from other local businesses. Pickups are available in Granville, Bexley, Westerville, New Albany, or The Limited offices. Last year I picked the best strawberries of the season at Bird's Haven and am still hoarding their berries I froze.

Sunny Meadows Flower Farm - In a twist of the CSA concept, Sunny Meadows offers a frequent buyer card. For $120, you get 11 $12 bouquets good at any market. This flexible system offers the same stability to growers Gretel and Steve but with more wiggle room for those who don't want to commit to a weekly pickup. Their beautiful, heirloom-variety flowers are grown sustainably in south central Ohio. They're offering a gift bag of Gretel's soap and herbal tea to those who purchase before markets open in April!

Swainway Urban Farm - This list would be incomplete without the farm I work with. We offer organic mushrooms and microgreens year-round with select field vegetables grown in Clintonville. Our winter CSA is already in full swing and not accepting new subscribers. We are working on a summer offering that will appeal to those who like to sleep in on Saturday mornings, as our mushrooms usually sell out within the first two hours. Here's my Swainway tour from 2011.

Have I convinced you to shop around for CSAs? Or are you already a subscriber?

Pantry Month Update

When I gave our family the challenge of eating what we had in our pantry, freezer, and larder with only $100 for fresh groceries, I pulled that number out of a hat.  A very shallow hat, it turns out.

I initially thought we might be able to count restaurant expenses from the benjamin, but in the wake of sinus surgery we relied on take out and busted the budget in two quick days. I'm changing the rules (they are my rules after all) and only counting grocery and beverage purchases for home consumption, also discounting purchases for cooking classes.

Current Report

In the first week, I spent $17.95 on milk and kefir and $8 on tea. We visited Whole Foods with me under the influence of pain pills and purchase $36.68 of yogurt, milk and produce. Yesterday, we spent $20.92 at the other whole foods on bananas, kale, cheese and milk. Grand total thus far: $83.55 Less than $20 for the next 12 days...

This is becoming a real challenge.

Going Without

There were pomellos at the grocery yesterday. Lil was very interested in them. Never having eaten one myself, I wanted so badly to buy the very large green skinned fruit and try it. But at $3.99 each, they were too expensive for our budget. In a normal month I would have bought one without a thought.

The rice Lil likes is almost gone as is our dry pasta. Lil is a carboholic and a picky one at that, so she may be sorely disappointed in the final week's menu.

I have no more red wine and am almost through the last bottle of white. I ordered more with a Groupon credit (I figure credits paid before January don't have to count towards the budget) which may or may not get here before the end of the month. The liquor cabinet remains well stocked to fulfill my drinking needs.

We have no more honey. I usually buy it in the lowest-cost-per-volume half gallon quantity but that would eat up nearly our entire remaining cash. I'm not sure yet whether we will continue to do without or buy a small bottle in the interim.

Can We Make It?

I remain confident that we will finish January spending no more than the remaining $16.45.  I am also confident we will go to the grocery bright and early on February 1 and buy some outrageous interesting food.  I am willing to wager that our receipt for that trip will be over $100...

Is anyone playing along?  How's it going?  If you are more experienced at budgeting, how much do you allow for groceries each month?

It's Local Foods Week!

Local Matters has declared the next seven days Local Foods Week.  They have arranged a plethora of local food activities including a Market to Market ride going on now.  Alex, Lil, and I have tickets for the Jeni's Tour Tuesday and I'm trying to figure out how to catch Brother's Drake Meadery at one of their tastings.

I am leading a canning demonstration at Oakland Nursery's newly renovated education space on Sunday October 10 from 12 - 1 pm during their fall festival. Come drop in and taste some homemade jams!

If you're up for it (we are!) take part in the Local Matters Eat Local Challenge this week for a chance to win prizes while eating delicious local food.

Cleveland is also hosting a local foods week October 2 - 10 with activities that make me want to flee northward.

I know everyone was carefully planning local foods week to coincide with my thirtieth birthday on Saturday. I can't think of a better way to celebrate than eating delicious locally grown foods. This week will be Oh So Good!

Meyer Lemon in the House

We have grown a meyer lemon tree indoors (and outside in summer) for 5 years now.  About twice a year it blossoms with tiny white flowers that have a captivating sweet scent.  Usually at least a couple of the flowers turn into baby lemon buds.  Sometime after, they dry up and fall off.  Just 4 times has a bud ripened into an edible lemon. This past fall, one such lemon deigned to grace us.

Lillian declared herself caretaker of the lemon.  She checked the color constantly and protected the lemon from the dog's tails and other nosy kids. Here's a picture of her caressing her citrus.

We told her the lemon could be picked when the skin was completely yellow.  The time finally came last week.

She plucked the lemon from its stem. She took a picture of Alex and I with the lemon.

I washed it and sliced it open.  There were surprisingly almost no seeds.  This picture doesn't show it, but the flesh was a perfect bright yellow with stark white pulp and lots of juice.

We each tried a slice raw.  It was sweeter than a normal lemon, crisp and clean.  Alex and I juiced the rest later for a simple lemon martini.

The time and attention we put into this tree certainly doesn't pay off in terms of harvest value.  But we love the rare occasions we can eat citrus grown right here in Columbus OH.

(My apologies for unfocused preschooler picture.  Constantly moving objects are not easy to photograph but I am working on it.)

Last of the Garden Carrots

On Saturday our little wraskally wrabbit and I prepared the last of our home grown carrots. We planted these Japanese long carrots back in August, I think.  We tended them until the second hard frost when we pulled them out of the ground.  The leafy heads were chopped off, dirt left on, and we stored them in a loosely tied plastic grocery sack in the fridge.

We've been slowly eating them since, savoring every delicious bite.  Whole carrots are so much tastier than the prewashed bagged "baby carrots" I grew up on.  Home grown whole carrots are even better than store whole carrots.

So Saturday we scrubbed and peeled and ate the last of the harvest.  They were still crunchy and tasty.  Next year: more carrots in the late season so we can have more for winter!

Cabinet doors, drawers and first meal!

We have been plugging away at all the little tasks that add up to huge advancements in functionality. Appliances came in the late afternoon Tuesday.  Alex worked on the dishwasher first because dirty dishes were piled up and clean dishes no where to be found.  It installed pretty easily.

The fridge ice maker and stove were another matter.  The handy installation kits failed to include critical parts in both cases, so another trip to Lowes was required.

(Aside: I counted on our credit card bill how many times we've been to Lowes recently.  Drumroll please: a whopping 22 times since 12/22/08.)

By Wednesday afternoon, appliances were up and running.  We made our first meal in the new kitchen Wednesday night.  The menu wasn't exciting because we didn't have much prep time, but it was so much fun to cook again.

In every spare moment, I have been building cabinet drawers, drilling holes, and attaching handles.  Finally this afternoon I had the whole wall of lower cabinets completed under the pass through!

Alex worked on upper cabinets today and now those are completed too.   We had another delicious home cooked meal tonight of chicken, goat cheese twice baked potatos, wilted local kale (from our CSA), and brownies.

Winter Veggie CSA begins!

Here's our first week of the Athens Hills Winter CSA (community support agriculture).  For those not familiar, CSAs are arrangements where consumers buy a share of a farmer's weekly harvest.  We LOVE CSAs because we get fresh local vegetables every week, the variety inspires interesting cooking, and we support a local farmer. We are splitting this winter CSA with friend Lissi.

This week's share: lettuce mix, spinach, sunflower sprouts, sweet potatoes, garlic, and mushrooms.

This is our "local" citrus, a meyer lemon, growing in our potted lemon tree.  It is almost ready for picking but still a little green on the bottom.  This fun tree has been with us for 4 years and has given us the same amount of lemons.  Not a great harvest ratio, but the blossoms smell lovely and it always surprises people that we have a lemon tree growing in the house.  :)