Community Supported Agriculture

Since May of this year we have been members of the Core Farms CSA. CSA is the acronym for Community Supported Agriculture. Core Farms CSA consists of three farms: Heartland Family Farms, New Growth Gardens, and Musgrave Orchard. In return for purchasing a share of the farms, we recieve a weekly basket of local, organic produce. We split the basket with our friends, Amy and Geoff, who purchased the other half of the CSA share. This works out nicely because we take turns picking up the produce, and if one of our families happens to be out of town, then that weeks produce won't go to waste. The season typically runs May through October. However, for the first time this fall, Core Farms added a ten week winter share.

Once a week, the kids and I make the 20 minute drive north to Musgrave Orchard where we pick up our share. It's always very exciting to see what we will be getting in our basket.

During the summer's peak harvest months, our basket is most plentiful and overflowing. One week in July, we received 18 ears of corn! Some of the other vegetables that we received this summer are, beets, eggplant, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, endive, cucumber, green beans, kale, leeks, salad mix, fall greens, peas, radish, onions, spinach, summer squash, summer melons, winter squash, chard, peppers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, potatoes, garlic, fresh cut flowers and herbs, apples and cider. This week we picked up our 5th week of produce from the winter share and I've been very impressed by the things we've received in our baskets so far. We've gotten persimmon pulp, sorghum molasses, butternut squash (my favorite), sweet potatoes, cider, apples, pumpkins, lettuces and eggs.
When we arrive at Musgrave, we make our way down to the back of the store to what they call their cellar. Once inside the cellar we are usually always greeted by Amy or Andy, the owners of Musgrave Orchard. They have all the produce spread out on big tables with signs indicating how much of each vegetable we should take. Amy always has a handout telling us which vegetable came from which farm, and on the bottom she's included a couple of recipes for some of the produce. Here is this weeks basket. Inside are sweet potatoes, apples, baking potatoes, lettuces, butternut squash, persimmon pulp, sage, local honey, cider and not pictured - eggs.

This should all make for a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. Which by the way, we will be sharing with Amy and Geoff. Our goal is to have a "mostly" local Thanksgiving dinner. Even our turkey is coming from a local farm, Schacht Farm (written about in an earlier post). Stay tuned for a future post about our "local" Thanksgiving dinner.