My Life With The CSA – Fresh With Benefits

I drove down the long driveway, peering to see the barn. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going but expected that would be the place I would find my first box of bounty.

There it was as I turned a bend. It was a sun warmed afternoon and already there were a number of cars parked outside the big grey barn next to a paddock with a horse and a wee donkey.

My walk from the car was welcomed by a flourish of white chickens and when I peeked inside the barn door a smiling face recognized me as new.

Claudia walked me through the routine. Pick my produce as noted by the size of my selected CSA. Whew! I thought they were just going to give me a box full of alien items I’d never seen before with names I couldn’t pronounce.

The first item on the list: Kohlrabi. Forget what I just said.

There were a few people there and I was surrounded by the comforting sound of happy chatter. I approached the greens section and learned that I would need to weigh my lettuce portion.

So in goes a bunch. 90 grams – way below my allotted 150 grams. In goes some more. Now I’m way over. I see this is gonna take some practice.

A fellow next to me tells me that he likes to play a little prank on his wife while she’s trying to navigate the lettuce weigh scale.

With a twinkly eye he confides that he lightly puts a finger on the corner so it weighs high. She removes a bunch and the next time there’s no finger so the weight drops significantly. This dance continues until he moves on to something else more amusing.

The realization came over me then that the CSA experience was not just going to be about the food – but also about the community of people I will meet along the way. All people who are committed to supporting local farming. So no matter how different we might be, we all share that common bond and in the months ahead I suspect it will earn me some new friends.

Like Dave and his lovely wife. Note to self: don’t bring Wayne here, he’s likely to get some pointers from Dave on how to drive me mad.

As I drive away I wave heartily at the donkey and think forward to the summer of picking up my basket of some new but mostly familiar ingredients and the culinary experiences ahead.

So what did I do with that kohlrabi? Find out next time with more stories from My Life With The CSA.