Okay, now that the introductory post is out of the way, it's time to get down to
business. Here are some of the specifics of the CSA program that Steve
& I enrolled in this year (skip down to the photo if you're not a type-A, detail-oriented person like yours truly). The Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative
operates out of Lancaster County, PA. Even though Lancaster is about 70
miles north of here, the nature center where Steve works is one of their
drop-off locations, so it's incredibly convenient for us. It's
hard to beat being able to pick up a week's worth of groceries in the middle of your work day! We paid a one-time $15 surcharge at the start of
the season for using an out-of-state delivery site. Totally
reasonable if you ask me.
If you scroll through some of the options on their CSA sign-up page, you'll see just how much they have to offer. Browsing their site gets me all excited! For our first year doing something like this, we opted to keep things on the simple side with: 1/2 vegetable share, 1 fruit share, and 1 chicken share. But I'll admit that the herb and cheese shares were both pretty tempting too.
We will get a total of 25 vegetable (4-7 varieties/week) and chicken (3 lbs/week, various cuts) deliveries, arriving every Thursday from May 15th to November 6th. There will be 22 fruit deliveries in all (2-3 varieties/week), starting on June 12th. There was no delivery yesterday (I'm not sure why, but the skipped week was in the schedule from the start), but otherwise we'll have contiguous deliveries through to November. Plus the week off gives me a chance to catch-up here on what we've been up to so far, before our next delivery arrives!
The whole season was originally scheduled to start one week earlier (May 8th), but with the extremely cold winter we all just suffered through, the members of the cooperative decided that things weren't quite ready yet and pushed the start date back to the 15th. Even this fact gives me a sense of connection to my food that I am otherwise mostly oblivious to. Stuff like ... the weather ... affects the timing of stuff like ... plants growing? I know that sounds dumb, but the weather doesn't usually stop us from marching into the grocery store and picking up whatever produce we happen to be jonesing for on a given day. So why would I think about that? I don't have to if I don't want to, right? Please tell me I'm not alone in defaulting to this way of thinking ...
If you scroll through some of the options on their CSA sign-up page, you'll see just how much they have to offer. Browsing their site gets me all excited! For our first year doing something like this, we opted to keep things on the simple side with: 1/2 vegetable share, 1 fruit share, and 1 chicken share. But I'll admit that the herb and cheese shares were both pretty tempting too.
We will get a total of 25 vegetable (4-7 varieties/week) and chicken (3 lbs/week, various cuts) deliveries, arriving every Thursday from May 15th to November 6th. There will be 22 fruit deliveries in all (2-3 varieties/week), starting on June 12th. There was no delivery yesterday (I'm not sure why, but the skipped week was in the schedule from the start), but otherwise we'll have contiguous deliveries through to November. Plus the week off gives me a chance to catch-up here on what we've been up to so far, before our next delivery arrives!
The whole season was originally scheduled to start one week earlier (May 8th), but with the extremely cold winter we all just suffered through, the members of the cooperative decided that things weren't quite ready yet and pushed the start date back to the 15th. Even this fact gives me a sense of connection to my food that I am otherwise mostly oblivious to. Stuff like ... the weather ... affects the timing of stuff like ... plants growing? I know that sounds dumb, but the weather doesn't usually stop us from marching into the grocery store and picking up whatever produce we happen to be jonesing for on a given day. So why would I think about that? I don't have to if I don't want to, right? Please tell me I'm not alone in defaulting to this way of thinking ...
Here is what we received in our Week 1 delivery last Thursday:
Vegetables
Red Scallions
Egyptian Walking Onions (they look like giant scallions having a crazy hair/root day)
Green Kale
French Breakfast Radishes (how fancy is that name?)
Asparagus
Mixed Lettuce
Chicken
2 breasts
2 whole legs(I skipped a photo of the frozen raw chicken because, who wants to see that?)
We have already made and enjoyed a handful of delicious meals, which I'll be back to share in the first half of next week. But first to enjoy a much needed three day weekend. Have a happy Memorial Day!
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