BLOG Day 1-Welcome! CSA Day

Thursday is CSA pick-up day, which is my favorite day of the week during CSA season. Tim and I share a CSA from JenEhr Family Farm with our friend, Robert von Rutenberg. This has been a particularly difficult year for many farmers. The drought and subsequent floods of 2007 were followed by a winter of record snowfall, a slow, cool spring, and now rain, rain and more rain. It makes me wonder why anyone would choose a way of life that is so dependent upon the weather. I'm extremely thankful that they do, though, because it allows us to continue on our quest to be dedicated locavores. I think for the farmers who do have CSAs, the CSA customers are critical during the lean years. If those same farmers chose only to sell at market or wholesale they would be in much worse shape financially. With the CSA at least they share the financial burden with the CSA members. Each week we receive a CSA e-newsletter reminding us to pick up our share and telling us what is in our box this week. The newsletter also has information about the farm, and recipes so we know what to do with some of the food we find in the box that we've never seen before. As I continue to build the website I'll be adding my own recipes that I've developed while playing with my CSA food. Some of what comes in our box I know wasn't on our dinner table while growing up. I've come to realize that my mother must have had an aversion to root vegetables, because I don't remember eating much in the way of beets (except pickled), turnips, parsnips, rutabaga, and many of the other wonderful things that give me such joy each week. I never look at the newsletter ahead of time to see what's in the box--that way it's like opening presents when I get to the farm and start transferring my box to my cooler. I love everything about the CSA, from farmers Kay and Paul, to pickup at the farm, to knowing exactly where my food came from and how it was grown, and best of all preparing and enjoying every last fresh, healthy, untainted, organic bite!