our CSA

We bought a CSA share for the summer and last night I picked up our first box of produce. For those of you unfamiliar with how CSAs work, it's like a produce subscription service with a local farm. The consumer pays a certain amount of money at the beginning of the growing season to help with the farmer's costs, and in return, you get a box of mixed produce from the farm every week. This is the farm we're signed up with.

Gardening and knowing where your food comes from is a big deal in Madison. Like just about everyone I know, I have my own garden in the backyard and shop fairly regularly at the farmers markets. I feel good about doing my part to eat locally. But I usually plant and buy the same few vegetables (lots of squash, bell peppers, corn, carrots - all the colorful stuff). One of my reasons for buying a CSA share is to branch out and expand our family's culinary horizons.

Look at all that green stuff in that box! The extent of my current green consumption is spinach salads and homemade kale chips so this is a whole new world. That entire box is green with the exception of a bunch of radishes. Radishes - yuck! But this is what it's about, right? Not just eating locally, but eating what's in season and no longer being intimidated by the veggies that fall out of my comfort zone. Each week with our box we get a newsletter about how things are going on the farm and suggested recipes for that week's haul. I guess this weekend we'll be eating braised greens and roasted radishes!

We're in the middle of a drought here in southern Wisconsin. The grass is dry and brittle, the temperatures are in the 90's, and we haven't had significant rain in weeks. We had a very early spring and many crops and plants are about a month ahead of schedule. The newsletter sent with this week's CSA box was all about how challenging this weather is for farmers. Another reason I wanted to get a CSA share is to better understand where our food comes from. It's one thing to buy a head of lettuce at the grocery store, it's another to get it directly from the farmer who grew it.

It isn't always easy to eat well AND eat healthy but here in Madison it is. I've lived in places where fresh produce was hard to come by, but here it's plentiful and affordable and people are really thoughtful about what they put in their bodies. I'm excited to see how things go with our CSA share this year and am already looking forward to seeing what's in our next box.