(Farm) Sharing is Caring
Farm Share Season has begun! Every Thursday between now and mid-November I’ll visit the farm to pick up our weekly bounty. This is our third year with this farm, and I keep coming back for two reasons: their produce is excellent, and they use a market-style system where you can choose whatever you like, up to your weekly limit. If I want several heads of broccoli, that’s perfectly fine! But the selection is so varied I usually have trouble choosing. This year they’ve added a refrigerated case to the shop, effectively doubling the available product space. I’m really excited to see how they fill the shelves each week.
You might be curious why we have a farm share subscription if we grow our own produce. I wondered about that myself last year, but quickly realized the farm provides variety we can’t achieve on our own. In our Kitchen Garden we currently have lettuce in abundance, and harvested our first beets this week—both the standard red and the stripey chioggia varieties. This week’s farm share haul included broccoli, garlic scapes, and kale which we don’t have in our garden, plus peas and herbs which are further along than ours. And all of it tastes so much better than supermarket varieties shipped in from who-knows-where.
After I pick up the share on Thursdays, I plan our meals for the week ahead. It’s a bit of a puzzle actually: some items need to be eaten right away, others will stay fresh for a while. Some can be part of a main course, others are sides. And of course I need to make sure to use both our share and whatever is available in our own garden. Farm Share Newsletter is a great resource. Every week, Ali Stafford describes how she used the goodies in her farm share, and also offers advice on how to get the most from the farm share model:
This week I’ll be making a main dish salad featuring beets, using the kale in a pasta sauce with tomatoes, and serving broccoli as a side with chicken curry. There will also be lots of green salads. The farm share peas disappeared in an instant, and they only made me want more peas. Hopefully ours will be ready for picking in the Kitchen Garden in time for next week’s meal planning.
I want to look for a CSA in our area. Thanks for the nudge.