More things to be stupidly excited about

[siercia]

A few years ago, we did a CSA for many of our summer vegetables. This was great... I loved getting random stuff to figure out how to cook, and the veggies we get were quite quite good.

Reading last week's food section of the paper this morning, there was an article about a farm that does a traditional veggie CSA, but also does a MEAT CSA. Once a month, you get 10 or 20 pounds of meat from their farm, a variety of chicken, pork, beef and lamb cuts.

We don't get to start until July, because their winter share was all sold out. And we'll have to carve time out of our weekend once a month to go pick it up in JP, but I think it's going to be totally worth it.

Now, I should go see if Lorac is interested in splitting a veggie share, or at least co-ordinating so we can share in the pickup duties.

ETA: For locals who might be interested, the share is coming from Stillman's Farm. Meat pickups are once a month in JP (Saturdays) or Brookline (Sundays). Veggie pickups are in a number of places around Boston on different days.

Comments

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

Ooooh. Can you give me the info for both of those? Also, if you and Lorac want, I'd be interested in doing a veggie share as well. (Though the farmers market right outside my building at work makes it easy to do fresh stuff, its not as cheap probably as the farmshare.)

[siercia]

Stillman's Farm has all the info.

[siercia]

And yes, we can discuss co-ordinating a share if you'd like. I'm pretty sure I'd like to get us a full share just for us, but they offer half shares, and we could certainly share in pickup duties - would make life way easier.

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

I checked it out in comparison to some of the other CSAs and it looks really good. Speaking of which, did you notice that they have a pickup in Braintree?

I'd be interested in the meat share if it weren't for the pork. I'd hate it if I got like 3 months of mostly pork products. (But Halleyscomet would love it!) And yes, pickup duties could be shared round and it would make life good. Did you find that the Full CSA share was enough for the 3 of you or less than you needed or more than you needed? I think we'd probably want to do a half share since there's only 2 of us.

[halleyscomet.livejournal.com]

Given the bunnies, we might be able to do a full share of the vegetables.

As for the meat, if we get a lot of pork, I'll just cook it up for lunches for myself. :)

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

True. Though I was figuring on making friends again at the farmers market so I could get all their lovely carrot tops for free.... Besides, the guy with the carrot tops was also the guy with the turnips.

I suppose that if we got the meat share and it had pork in it that you could share that with my family or Dchenes. I know she loves a good pork chop...

Hows about we try a half share and the meat this year and supplement with the studd coming out of our garden and the stuff I get at the market outside work? Talk it over with Siercia, would you?

[siercia]

Actually, that pickup is in NEW Braintree (who even knew there WAS a New Braintree?), which is out past Worcester. I got briefly excited about that too.

When we did this before, we split a full share with Carrie and William, and found that splitting it, there was often an oddly small amount of some vegetables. I don't know if a CSA packaged half share would be better balanced. I'm trying to eat more vegetables, always, so want the bigger package.

[rawrin.livejournal.com]

What is a CSA? I'm betting you're not talking about databases (http://www.csa.com/aboutcsa/company.php). :)

[siercia]

CSA stands for "Community SUpported Agriculture". The shares are essentially people in the community pre-paying for their vegetables (buying a share in the summer's crop) and then getting a box of veggies every week for the summer. Farms get money up front, at the start of the growing season, before they have produce to sell, buyers usually get a better price on produce (at least in a good harvest year) than they would at the farmer's market.

[rawrin.livejournal.com]

Ooooh.

That sounds like a great idea!

[winkymonkey.livejournal.com]

Thanks for asking. I was wondering that myself.

[rawrin.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! :D

[siercia]

Sorry, I babbled about this incessantly when I did it a few years ago - I forget that many many of you haven't been reading my journal that long.

[skreeky]

I wouldn't call it "stupidly excited." =) I just finished reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and it really got to me. A lot. I've been meaning to post about it.

I didn't realize the folks in the article were the folks from my old JP farmers' market. That is so awesome, and we are so getting farm shares. Thanks for the pointers!

[siercia]

Well, you didn't see me bouncing in my desk chair, telling my boss all about it. Was pretty stupid, in a dork girl kind of way. =)

I'm reading Omnivore's Dilemma now, and between that and "The Best Thing I Ever Tasted", having what is probably a similar reaction to yours.

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

By the way, we should probably all see if we can trade off amongst ourselves some of the stuff that we hate so it doesn't spoil. I can think of one already that I detest: beets! But if you hate turnips, I'll trade you turnips for beets any day!

[siercia]

We should. Although I'm blessed. Wiley will eat (or at least try) anything that I put down in from of him, and Widget will as well, for the most part. But yeah, if there's turnips, I'll happily trade those away, since they make your whole house smell.

[muffinslinger.livejournal.com]

sorry to but in butt i just have to say: BOOBIES! i love blue footed boobies.

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

Nav and I are experimenting with a half-share of veggie from a CSA this year. I didn't know there were meat ones. I suspect that it being in JP may make it more trouble than it's worth for us. Good to know about though.

I'm somewhat scared about how this will all work, and hope we don't drown in caarots.

[siercia]

When we did it, it was fun. An interesting challenge to cook with veggies I'd never seen before. There was no week where we drowned in any particular vegetable, but there were a few times where we got a fair amount of something offbeat for a few weeks in a row.

Overall, though, I'd highly recommend it.

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

I'll let you know how it turns out, and please do post about yours?

[siercia]

Oh, I'm quite sure I'll be posting about mine. Looking forward to hearing your experience too.

[gimmeapony.livejournal.com]

I love CSAs! We've done the Farm School and I am thinking about doing The Food Project this year (they have pickups at the JP farmer's market, just like your place.) I've always wondered if a local place did meat CSAs. I'd love to do that, too, but we eat very little meat (ex vegetarian and all) and I don't think we could get through 10 pounds in a month.

[siercia]

We thought about it, and we eat a lot of meat in our house, as we're all pretty dedicated carnivores. We're getting the big share, and will see how much we manage to go through.

[bigmeanie.livejournal.com]

Oh! I'll have to see if I can find a CSA up here.. or, at least, find one that delivers!

[siercia]

http://www.localharvest.org/ had a search function to let you find CSAs and farmstands by town or zip code.

[bigmeanie.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I just found some at http://www.getrealgetmaine.com.

[siercia]

Excellent!

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

(Goes. Looks.)

Damn! That looks good! Though I'd have to learn to cook a bunch of different things. (I have no idea what to do with kholrabbi. If it's not a Jewish pastor with eye makeup.)

[siercia]

It is a lot of fun to get these boxes every week with vegetables you've never seen before that you have no idea what to do with. In those cases, google and epicurious.com are your friends.