I’ve posted before about the richness of agriculture in this area and a couple of weeks ago I attended a luncheon to honor a woman who is one of the local pioneers in community support agriculture (CSA). She did not come from a farming family, but married into one. Tragically, her husband died young and she was left with two toddler sons and 500 acres that she had not remotely considered running. She was determined, however, to try her best and what she accomplished was pretty incredible. One of the things she did was develop a line of miniature vegetables and later expanded into Community Support Agriculture, an effort that her youngest son now operates as she has moved more into an advocacy role. Her passion is genuine and she provided the gorgeous heirloom tomatoes for the luncheon. We have a few Farmers’ Markets around and fruit and vegetable stands dot the roadsides, but I really wasn’t knowledgable about CSA.

I confess that my vegetable likes are significantly more limited than my husband’s and I am not certain that we would be able to consume the quantity of vegetables that come with the weekly box. If, like me, you are not familiar with a CSA, you buy a certain size “share” from the CSA, then receive an assortment of what they grow each week for the duration of the growing season. In some cases they deliver to individual homes, although in this case, you can either pick up from them or from a designated grocer. The farm is not too far from where we live, so that is what we will do if we decide to give it a try. The other thing is that if we don’t need a pick-up for a particular week, they will contribute our portion to Farm Share, and we appreciate the work that they do.

I’m leaning in this direction, so if any of you have tried this, please do let me know about your experience.