doodledee

Last Sunday's business section featured an article on buying boxes of vegetables from local farms. It seemed like an odd time to write the article - it being the end of the season and all - but timing issues aside, it was a good introduction to the whole concept.

As you may remember, this year we signed up for a similar program. Our weekly deliveries have now transitioned from spring salad mixes and greenhouse tomatoes through the summer corn and bean and melon season. There's always some onions or garlic or shallots and there's always some herbs. There's also usually beets. Lots of beets. Odd how many beets we got. Oh, and we got a lot of these little Sungold cherry tomatoes which were outrageously good and may have been my favorite item.

So how was it? Here's my nutshell review: I'm happy with what we're doing, but not always with what we're getting. In other words, while I feel good about supporting a small family farmer who is struggling with a business model based on growing organic heirloom vegetables and selling them to elitists in the big city, that doesn't mean that my weekly delivery always jives with the stuff I'd want to get. I mean good lord, we got so many of these 'paste' tomatoes (see pic above). And sure, they're good, but they're small and after 25 or 30 of them I've started to groan when I open the box and see them. How about a couple of nice slicers instead? Also, they were stingy with the corn. The Strib article said their box would have a dozen ears every week. We'd be lucky to get 6, and that was only for a few weeks.

I have [obviously] continued to question if it's really "worth" the money. My nutshell review applies here as well, but I'll add that some weeks it totally does and some weeks it totally doesn't.

Would I do it again? Sure, we probably will next year. Would I do it from Rock Spring Farm? Eh, probably not. And so it goes. If you love your CSA, lemme know and I'll totally look into it as a replacement.

Buying directly from farms gains appeal [strib]
Rock Spring Farm [rsfarm]
it's like a farmer's market in a box [doodledee]