Hellooooo fresh produce!
Ryan and I recently joined our local Community Supported Agriculture’s share program, and we’re SUPER excited for all the fresh produce we’re gonna accumulate over the next few weeks!
Our first (and most recent) pick-up was last Thursday, and we’ve already eaten everything that we received.
I’ve been interested in CSA programs ever since I first learned about them while living back in mid-Michigan, but I’ve never feasibly been able to explore that interest… mostly due to being single and living alone. Who can eat that much produce on their own?!
But, Flagstaff has a really cool CSA program and an accompanying local market located downtown, which re-sparked my interest in the concept of community-supported agriculture.
When Ryan and I moved in together, we talked about joining the share program, but then I moved to northern California for the winter, so the idea got put on hold.
Then, once I started preparing to end my work assignment and leave California, I noticed that the spring share dates aligned PERFECTLY with my pending move back home to Flagstaff. Clearly, it was fate!
I paid our deposit and we reserved our spring share.
We bought a half-share, which means we pick up fresh produce every other week, rather than every week. We’d like to buy a full share in the future, but we figured a half-share was a good start.
CSA programs are a really great way to support local farms and agriculture. By purchasing a share, you’re basically cutting out the grocery store and buying produce directly from a small, local and usually organic farm.
Community-supported agriculture is way more sustainable that traditional grocery shopping, because shopping local farms means there’s less waste involved with packaging, transporting and storing produce. Also, buying locally means that products are so much fresher.
Because this is the only CSA program I’ve been a part of, I’m not sure how the Flagstaff CSA experience compares, but here, we don’t get a share in what or how much produce we get. We pay up front and then we pick up our haul when it comes in.
We were told we’d get about seven to nine different items each pick-up, and what we get depends on what’s in season. Because we’re in Arizona, we’re really lucky that we have a crazy varied climate across the state, which means we get a really wide variety of produce.
Right now, Flagstaff CSA is working with Blue Sky Farm and Crooked Sky Farm — both of which are located down in the Phoenix area — for its spring shares. The share program farms change depending on the season, but the downtown local market stocks all kinds of local produce and products that you can shop just like a regular grocery store.
I just finished using the last of our produce share, so I wanted to recap some of what I used our share for as well.
Our share contained lemons, oranges, two types of kale, gold potatoes, butter lettuce, onions, purple cauliflower and carrots.
We cooked the kale and onions into two frittatas, diced up the potatoes and carrots for fondue night, made salad with the lettuce, turned the cauliflower into buffalo wings and used the lemons in a batch of cookies.
Ryan and I both eat SO much produce, so we’re really excited we could finally buy a share at our local CSA. We’re only one pick-up in, but already, we’re both so excited about our future produce hauls, and we’re hoping that we can commit to a full share in the future… once we aren’t juggling work assignments and fire season.
