Think Spring – Think CSA

It’s spring! Well, it might not seem like it, but it is officially the Vernal Equinox. Soon all this dreary grey snow will fully melt away and we will be surrounded by greenery and singing birds. What a beautiful thought.

Of course, spring also brings with it the perfect time to garden and eat locally-grown food. Hopefully you have the time and space to plant some of your own food, but obviously that can be hard for a lot of people. There’s always farmer’s markets, but maybe there isn’t enough variety in the offerings for you. If you’re looking for a way to round out your diet, a CSA is a really good way to get lots of produce and know exactly where it originates.

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and it is a subscription service offered by many farms to sell their crops to members of the community. As a subscriber, you sign up for a share, which usually comes in half or full-size, and can include anything from fruits and vegetables to meat, eggs, or even flowers. These shares typically come once per week or every other week and can either be picked up at the farm or at a convenient location near your neighborhood.

One of the best things about becoming part of a CSA is getting vegetables that you might not normally think to use in cooking. It can really expand your culinary horizons. Of course, sometimes you might get stuck with an excess of beans or tomatoes, but that’s when you can make dinners for friends or share some of your abundance with the community, so everybody wins.

In Wisconsin, farms are everywhere, and many of them offer CSAs. It might be hard to know where to start, but Local Harvest is a great resource that covers many of the farms in the country. This site is also an awesome resource for farmer’s markets, discussion boards, and local events.

Are you planning on joining a CSA this year? Tell us about it by commenting here or dropping an email. I’d love to share opinions of CSAs on a future blog.