CSA Baby!

About a year ago, we decided that we wanted to eat more locally grown food. We've always been the kind of people who eat whole, fresh foods. We buy bulk and stay as far away from packaged foods as possible (aside from canned beans and such). Melanie loves to cook and I love to help her, it is our way of decompressing after a day at work. At lunch time, coworkers are always more interested in my leftovers than they are in their own lunches.

I digress... we realized that even though we were buying whole foods, we were still getting most of our food from thousands of miles away when we could be getting it more locally. This was contrary to our ethics about reducing our own environmental footprint and supporting local economy. That is when we decided to get a CSA box (community supported agriculture).

For those who haven't heard of it before, it is a box of vegetables supplied weekly by a local farmer. Most of the time these are organic, and they are always filled with what is in season. You purchase a seasonal share of the crop and can usually pay monthly. We found that we were not only receiving superior produce than what you find in stores, but that we were spending a lot less per month and getting enough veggies to feed a family of 3-4. It was difficult to use it all unless we were creative, which brings me to another point. You need to be an open-minded eater to have one of these boxes. If you won't try cooking with beets, kale, or kolrabi, you will not be able to cope. Get over it.

We discovered Boistfort Valley Farms through a friend and were very pleased by their produce boxes. They always provided recipes for what was in the box and they didn't supplement from other farms. Some farmers will mix from other farms much farther away so that they can provide a better variety, but it doesn't support the local concept because sometimes those farms are several hundred miles further away from them and you. We found Boistfort to provide a pretty good variety from their single farm, and they send us flowers every week, too.

CSA is a very positive experience. You eat healthier, get better quality, support your local economy, decrease your environmental footprint, and best of all you save money. In these modern times, why pay a petrol tax on produce when you don't have to? It is a win-win situation.