My first CSA share!
I picked up 50 lbs of fantastic vegetables from my local CSA (Gretta's Farm) this weekend. The farm is 1 mile from my house. Not only am I really excited to enjoy eating these, I'm also considering what I would like to grow in my own garden next fall. Gretta (and partner farms) grow all of this locally using sustainable organic methods.
The distribution included: oak leaf lettuce, broad leaved escarole, rainbow chard, hakurei turnips, spinach, parsley, green and red peppers, a couple jalapeno chiles, fennel, leeks, Napa cabbage, onions, beets, potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, Daikon radish, acorn and Delicata winter squash, a pie pumpkin and 10 lbs of apples.
What did we eat first?
Well, the apples were first. They're going fast. Very crisp and sweet.
Second was the oak leaf lettuce. Excellent! I will definitely add this to my crops next year.
And third was the carrots and red peppers. Nice in salads. Sweet colorful spears in martinis. I tried to grow red peppers this year without success and will try again next year.
Tonight I made a delicious cabbage risotto with the Napa cabbage (also using carrot, onion and parsley). I'll consider cabbage growing myself (Napa, savoy or other). It's an attractive and very hardy fall vegetable.
I'm looking forward to eating my giant sweet potato. I'll probably make sweet potato fries (deep fry) half for one meal and then bake the other half. Yummy! I don't know much about growing these. A gardener I know at the BVG grew a crop this year and was very happy with them. I'll have to look into this.
No, we're not eating all these veggies ourselves. We shared half with another family (David and Jennifer) and will bring some of our half to my parents. I still have greens, radish, beets, carrots, potatoes and onions from my garden. (If we don't look out, we'll turn into rabbits with all these veggies!)
CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)
9 comments:
Yay! We got ours too:
http://svetlana3k.livejournal.com/38388.html
The sweet potatoes are HUGE, the potatoes look great, the lettuces are awesome, and I haven't a clue what to do with the Daikon or Harukei. We ended up with a different variety of apples than you (red, tart, but very crisp). We got 2 kinds of kale, and no swiss chard. No fennel either, but we got a cabbage looking thing (red and white, very bitter).
I'm so excited, and I can't wait to see what they have for us next time!
Wow that is a huge distribution and it looks fabulous.
jennifer, I love your photo! red cabbage like thing sounds like radicchio. Here's a photo of one Gretta gave me several weeks ago. You can stir fry it, if you don't like it raw. I enjoyed the whole head raw in salads.
I wrote to Gretta and she confirmed it was radicchio. Can't do that with shaws :)
"Um, hi, I bought some weird red leafy thing from you, can you tell me if it's a cabbage?"
I gave it to mom since she's more likely to eat it than we are.
Now that's a haul of veggies!
The sweet potato looks really good. After following "tiny farms blog" sweet potato growing venture I have to try to grow them next year.
WOW!!
That is such a wonderful photograph, makes my mouth water. That is what I call 'food porn'!
Matron! You'll get me shut down with such language! (thanks)
What a wonderful array of vegetables!
Kudos for signing up for a CSA in addition to your own plots.
I'm beginning to think I need to develop a root cellar and install an (energy-efficient) chest freezer in the basement to keep up, myself.
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