CSA Review! Thoughts from a first time participant and vegetable enthusiast

 Hey hey! Happy Wednesday. Now that we are officially one week out of our first season, I wanted to share my feelings after my first full season participating in a CSA. 

If you're unfamiliar (I was too until about six months ago!), CSA stands for community supported agriculture. Essentially, you purchase shares of crops from a farm (usually local to your area) and in return you receive portions of the crops grown throughout that season or whatever time period the farms sets. 

Back in May, I had started to read about some farms in the Milwaukee area that offered programs like this, and I became very curious! I LOVE vegetables. And, even more so, I LOVE cooking seasonally! This seemed like an awesome way to lean into both of these loves of mine. Additionally, it seemed like an excellent way to support local agriculture, widen our vegetable palate, and shorten the amount of processing our food went through. Win, win, win! Ha. 

Kale and tomatoes from our CSA box! A delightful summer breakfast. 

After looking around, the farms in our area offered mostly similar but slightly different programs. Most were a lump payment initially (or possibly a few payments spread out during the season), with either deliveries or pickup of crop shares throughout the summer, taking place every week or every other week. Some farms had different size shares, with estimates of feeding 2ish people, or 4ish people. And, some farms listed examples of past vegetables they've grown and some potential crops you could receive during the upcoming season. 

So, we ended up going with Old Plank Farm! We loved that they had an option for a smaller share since we are just two people, and I was very intrigued by the option of being able to buy other, specialty items sourced from other local farms. We went with the small share ($310), and were set to receive weekly pickup for about 20 weeks, with about 5-8 items per week. Our first delivery was in mid-June, and it was so exciting!

This was our first box! As you can see if was a lot of leafy greens as that's what was ready in mid-June. Lettuce, spinach, mixed greens, garlic scapes, and some rhubarb! How our farm worked was that each week on Thursday we would receive an email with what the expected harvest was for next week, and then a form to fill out where you could customize your box. Most weeks we could choose 1 item out of 5ish choices. If there were any additional items to purchase, they would be in this Thursday email. We had until Sunday to fill out this form, and then we picked up our vegetables on Tuesdays! We went to a local residence, but they had pickups available at the farm, a variety of other private residences, and even some corporate offices. Pretty neat! 

As you can see, we received tomatoes galore! Haha. The jewels of summer, right?? We seriously had such a large array of produce throughout the summer! Potatoes, onions, leeks, lettuce, kale, arugula, sweet potatoes, garlic, cauliflower, cucumber, zucchini, broccoli, cantaloupe....the list goes on and on! We even received a yellow watermelon (see below!). I was sooo excited that week, I sent a picture to my mom! It was extra sweet. 

We did end up having a few different specialty item order options! We ordered cherries from Michigan, maple syrup, apple cider, canning tomatoes, and peaches - see below! It was delightful. Truly the quality of produce from the farm was just unbeatable, and I thought these special order items really highlighted how excellent farm fresh produce is! These peaches were so incredible. They were sweet and juicy and so insanely good. I made peach jam, peach cobbler, and even peach hand pies (see picture). And we ate peaches on their own for dayssss. It was a dreamy two weeks! 

So, if you have the opportunity to participate in a CSA near you, I would highly recommend it! It pushed me out of my cooking comfort zone and added some incredible produce to our summer diet. Cheers to vegetables!