Farm share, week 2

[magid]

The big surprise: no head of lettuce! Bizarre. It doesn't feel like inundation of veggies at all, actually.

• a bunch of collards or green kale (the former, for me)
  
• a bunch of hakurei turnips with greens
  
• a small bunch of baby carrots with greens
  
• a bunch of herbs, dill or parsley or oregano (the latter, for me)
  
• 0.4 pounds of mesclun
  
  
• fruit share: a pint of strawberries

Boston Organics, small box, 2/3 veg.

• a head of cauliflower
  
• a bunch of red chard
  
• two smallish summer squashes
  
• six medium red-skinned potatoes
  
• three nectarines
  
• two kiwis
  
• two Valencia oranges
  
• 250 grams (8.8 ounces) of rather large strawberries

I'm debating getting a large box next week, since this doesn't quite feel enough to make it through the week...

---

It looks like there's a bunch of construction happening in the Boylston T stop. That's good: it's currently a pit. They've also painted some of the scalloped walls in the tunnel heading to Park, transforming that section from dirt-covered to almost white.

Of course, I managed to walk home in the heaviest part of the downpour. At least there was thunder and lightning, but I wasn't wearing a hat with a brim, which made things annoying after a while.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

You've gotten double strawberries last week and this. Yum!

Also the oregano sounds nice.

I like the way you get to be pleasantly surprised each week. As adults, there are few good surprises in life.

How are you feeling (wrt the pulled muscle)?

[magid.livejournal.com]

Half the strawberries are gone already :-).

The oregano I put into sauce for pasta, where it's blended very well with everything else I threw in.

I really like the surprises each week, especially with the farm share, because it's another way to feel connected to the seasons, to the non-urban planet, rather than the climate-controlled, everything-available-nothing-in-season sort of supermarket (and life...). Sort of like the Jewish holidays (Jewish time in general), though modified for a local geography.

Thank you, I'm feeling much better. There's still some pain, but I've been doing a lot of walking. Ibuprofen and applying heat (at work, too, thanks to a coworker having an electric heating pad there :-) seem to be doing the trick.

[(Anonymous)]

Experiencing the in-season connection is great, I agree. We had major gardens when I was younger, but not when I was older, so I didn't learn all that much about the seasons, and felt quite . . . cheated, I think, when I learned that grapefruits' season in the late fall.

And yes, regarding the Jewish calendar. I love how agriculture is such a large part of Judaism. I wish I were an agriculturalist in Israel.

Yay for speedy healing.

[magid.livejournal.com]

We never managed much of a garden growing up, though there were the ever-present blackberries (that my dad would make attempts to cut back, usually unsuccessfully). There was a farm with a farm stand a couple of miles away, which was nice.

I knew about grapefruit because my grandmother would send us a box in the winter.

I remain in awe of how green Israel's deserts have become, how cutting-edge they are with so many food technologies (breeding tomatoes that can deal with higher salinity water (if I'm remembering correctly), hydroponics, getting 2000-year-old date pits to sprout, and so on).

Israel is still one of the few places I could see myself living, if I didn't live here. There are things I'd want to change (even ignoring the whole Arab-Israeli issue, there's stuff like casual smoking, organic produce, the not-truly-free public libraries (with limits on the number of books taken out at once! heresy!), pollution, etc), but it wouldn't stop me from moving there, given the right impetus. (What that is, I'm not sure any more.)

[fetteredwolf.livejournal.com]

We didn't get the cauliflower, potatoes or oranges, but we did get green and red leaf lettuce, Roma tomatoes, green bell peppers, an avocado, celery, pears, and bananas. I always like comparing the loot! (Our strawberries are all gone now, but it's not such a feat, since we only got the Boston Organics, and there are two of us.)

[magid.livejournal.com]

I nixed lettuce, assuming there'd be tons of lettuce from the farm... I might have to go to the farmer's market Friday (once I figure out what the Shabbat menu will be). In fact, I think I'm not getting almost anything you do; different preferences... I love being able to choose like that. It means that the complete surprise of farm share stuff has a steady palette of things I know I can work with easily.

My Boston Organics strawberries are already gone, too :-)
(The farm ones are much smaller, but good flavor. I noticed that both kinds felt a bit watery, but considering the weather we've had, not a surprise).

[debsters1101.livejournal.com]

ok so can you explain to me what this whole farm share thing is? do you just get random veggie deliveries every week?

[magid.livejournal.com]

A farm share (aka CSA, community-supported agriculture) is when vegetable addicts (and other eaters :-) pay up front for a season of whatever's ripe that week. Depending on the farm, you may pick up at the farm, or at a drop off point closer to home. Some farms also have a work component, but that's less frequent. Especially in the northeast, it means that farmers get needed cash before the spring planting, evening out the cash flow (even when people pay in installments, it helps even things out). For me, it means getting organic food grown fairly locally, supporting a farmer directly rather than paying a lot for transportation and such.

I envy the people in CA who get their farm share year round; here it's usually about 20 weeks, and some have the option of getting a 'winter share' that has a couple of deliveries of root veggies and squashes and such.

Er, enough, too much, or too little information?

If you want to see what I've gotten in previous years, the memories section has a category called "farm share". This is my second year with this particular farm, the third farm I've had a share in.

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

"Of course, I managed to walk home in the heaviest part of the downpour. "

Me, too. good thing I'm not water soluble!

[magid.livejournal.com]

I was in a thin T-shirt; luckily that wasn't water soluble either...
(It was hot this morning! Really!)