121770 Fri Jul 25 10:52:12 -0700 2003 14 8 Midwest 0 662555 Are CSA subscriptions a chowhound-ish thing? CSA = Community Supported Agriculture, not Confederate States of America. How many of you subscribe to a CSA? If you are a subscriber, are you having a good experience? What do you like about your CSA? What do you dislike? We subscribed. We're in our second year. Last year was a bad year - weather resulted in low yields, but this year is more than making up for it. We get a canvas bag full of vegetables every thursday. There's a pair of drop-points within 1 mile from our house. One drop off spot happens on monday, the other on thursday. I like thursday because I can use the fresher stuff when I do weekend cooking. The food quality is, in some instances, superior to organic in grocery stores. The broccoli we had last night was amazing. Baby carrots that taste sweet, unlike those little orange bunny-luv cardboard pellets. I didn't think potatoes would taste better, but they do. Herbs are ok, but I'd rather use the ones I grow. The lettuces are good. Zucchini, fennel, and tomatoes have been decent. Corn is coming soon and that's a treat. I think we get some benefits beyond the $/weight of vegetables. We tend to change our diet during the summer months to eat what comes in on Thursday. For four months, we eat more vegetables and less meat. We also eat more seasonally and locally during these months. Unfortunately, in Minnesota, eating seasonally seems to mean eating meat, fish, canned fruits and vegetables, dried grains and/or root vegetables from October through May. It's also fun to go visit the farm. The kids love chasing the chickens and catching frogs. Our farmer is a middle-aged back-to-the-lander who fled Berkeley for rural Wisconsin. It's fun helping her with a little planting, weeding and harvesting. She hires local teens for serious work and has a couple of WOOFERS staying in a small bunkhouse or tents throughout the summer. Fri Jul 25 10:52:12 -0700 2003 0 Jim Grinsfelder 1 662556 The idea of CSAs is more attractive than the reality. We subscribed to two different providers and each time felt the price was high, quality so-so, and in one case the flake-factor was extremely problematic (e.g., travelling halfway across town for a pickup to find they were "running late; maybe tomorrow"). I prefer to buy from the Hmong growers at the farmers market. They're cheaper, better, and I get the same supporting-the-local-community satisfaction. Fri Jul 25 11:42:58 -0700 2003 662555 0 Plautus 2 662575 i have to agree with plautus. we tried it several times with varying degrees of success/pleasure. yes, it was nice to base our summer diet around fresh produce, but it's hard to make a meal from garlic scapes and three stalks of asparagus--for 6 weeks straight. we also felt irked when we would see abundant offerings from the same farm at our local Whole Foods when we got box after box of "cooking greens" (salad that's too bitter to eat raw). often our produce would seem a little long in the tooth, if you know what i mean. another ex csa friend also bemoaned the stress of being forced to deal creatively with your box week after week. unless you have time to devote to blanching and freezing those veggies, or canning, you'll feel her wrath, too. we still have frozen edamame from 2 years ago... we also prefer to hit the "off off broadway" (less popular) local farmers' market. i hate to say it as a cliche, but the asian farmers there have scads of top-quality offerings on the cheap. and we use everything we buy. Sun Jul 27 15:14:03 -0700 2003 662556 0 skrattypants 3 662582 Interesting perspectives. FYI, there has been some stuff written on CSAs in the Not About Food section (I have written some there, figuring the disucssion is more about food procurement than some actual tangible food...), and on some of the New York and DC boards. It sounds as though, like anything, the satisfaction with a CSA depends a lot on how it is administered, and the farm it is partnered with. Ours often lets you choose from an array of vegetables (within certain classes of veggies), and I have to say, even in bad years like this, there is always a really wide range of stuff. And the quality is top, top notch--LOADS of flavor. I would totally hate it if I saw my farm or a nearby organic farm selling better stuff at the market, and would probably quit the CSA. But what I get is better than the market stuff, by a mile. So perhaps it's less the concept, but more about the farm and the demands made on it. Maybe someone else will take up the idea near you? Sun Jul 27 18:44:49 -0700 2003 662575 0 Jenae R 4 662584 I agree with everyone's writing. If I saw my CSA provider making better stuff available through other channels, I'd drop their CSA in a minute. I thought there'd be some flakey CSA farmers out there, so when I went looking, I went to a "green living" fair at the St. Paul Nat'l Guard Armory and met about 6 CSA farmers. I picked one that had been in the business for 9 years. I still go to the farmer's market and buy things that I don't get enough of from the CSA. Apparently we eat more carrots and beets than the average family of four. I like the idea of going to the off-off-broadway markets. I'll give them a try, I've been going to St. Paul's main farmer's market in preference to Minneapolis because it's all local and Lovetree Farms is there on Saturday with spectacular cheese at a high price ($10 / chunk). Sun Jul 27 23:20:25 -0700 2003 662582 0 Jim Grinsfelder 5 662595 So... which farmers markets are the "off-off-broadway" markets that folks suggest? Mon Jul 28 15:26:31 -0700 2003 662584 0 Danny 6 662601 here in madison wi, there are several options to the infamous dane county FM around the capitol on saturdays. we have tuesdays on the east side of town, wednesdays outside the city-county building, saturdays at the local mall parking lot. there are loads of others in nearby towns. don't get me wrong--the dane county market--just like the great st paul market--still has things i live and die for (fabuloso cheeses prime amongst them) and we still go there occasionally. but when we want produce--good, cheap produce--we shop the off off markets. we're still supporting local farmers, but not competing with those who just come for the scene. you know what i mean. Mon Jul 28 19:16:43 -0700 2003 662595 0 skrattypants 7 662620 We tried a CSA a few years ago and were quite disappointed. We were promised that our share would feed a family of four for 2-3 meals, and I never received enough of anything to make a single meal for one person. However, I had three weeks in a row where we literally received an entire grocery bag of lettuce. The sad part of it was that the CSA blamed the lack of produce on our "drought" conditions, though I was getting a bumper crop out of my own organic garden that I watered whenever I remembered to and weeded it about four times all summer. The flake factor was huge - I once saw one of the garden interns (summer college help) meditating (sleeping?) between rows while he was supposed to be weeding and the interns seemed to have set up their own commune, complete with free love. The sad thing is that the woman who runs the CSA sets it up as a non-profit center so she receives a significant amount of donations and charity, but it certainly doesn't go into the land. I would also caution everyone about the Hmong vegetables. One of the main reasons their stuff looks beautiful is their liberal use of pesticides. There is a Hmong garden near our home that is tended by a number of families and you should see the empty cans and containers of pesticide that ring their gardens. I was first told about this by the farmer who has land adjacent to theirs and he said he went over there one night and looked at the labels. Nasty stuff, some of which is banned in our country. Tue Jul 29 13:58:20 -0700 2003 662601 0 Lisa 8 662791 i'm sure pesticide use isn't limited to the hmong. trust that if the produce isn't labelled as such, whether in a farmer's market or regular grocery, it most likely isn't. farming organically can be expensive and time consuming, taking as much as 20 years to convert previously conventionally farmed land to legal "organic" status--something the seller wants to highlight. it's up to the buyer to ask if they're concerned, and to shop in organized markets that keep tabs on the honesty of its vendors. for the record, many if not most of our local asian marketeers are doing without chemicals. Mon Aug 04 19:00:56 -0700 2003 662620 0 skrattypants 9 662793 I'm lurking from another board and am intrigued... what are "hmong vegetables," where in the midwest do you buy them, and how did they get there in the first place? Mon Aug 04 21:18:49 -0700 2003 662791 0 butterfly 10 662795 A lot of Hmong people have settled in the Twin Cities area in the past 20-30 years or so. Many of them grow vegetables for the farmers markets here. They sell a lot of greens - some recognizable such as mustard greens, collards, baby bok choy, pea shoots - many that are not very familiar. Mon Aug 04 23:08:18 -0700 2003 662793 0 shoo-bee-doo 11 662971 I agree about the pesticides - I've always figured the more "beautiful" the produce, the greater the chance of pesticide use. I have my own garden, and try to garden organically. Some vegetables look great without any assistance and others are like bug magnets. If I'd have to give a definition to Hmong farmers/vegetables, it would just be a group or family of Hmong who are tending a plot somewhere (or have their own farm) and sell their produce at farmer's markets. Sometimes they do have unusual things - I bought some really long beans once that were very good. Wed Aug 13 20:25:26 -0700 2003 662795 0 Lisa 1 662587 Hi Jim, We split a CSA share with another couple. The quality has been pretty good, and logistics have yet to be a problem. While I think quality may be higher and prices cheaper at the Farmers' Market, this has been a fun experiement. I like being "forced" to cook with the foods that I get each week -- some of which I wouldn't typically buy. I still don't know if I'll do it next year. I may return to the Farmers' Market instead. Mon Jul 28 09:26:04 -0700 2003 662555 0 Brad Ballinger 1 662710 It's interesting to note that no one mentioned their CSA by name. We who name names and feel perfectly free to rant or rave over restaurants are reluctant to name our CSA's? Or is it more that we've forgotten their names? We are in our first season with a CSA, using Rock Spring Farm. They've been very reliable for the vegetables, though I signed up for a pork share and haven't heard anything about it. (I also haven't called them or looked into it, so I'm not assuming there is a problem.) The season started slow, with lots of greens that didn't taste much better than those I buy at Mississippi Market. But it improved with wonderful yellow cherry tomatoes, fennel, rutabega, baby rose potatoes and beets. This week has been the best haul yet- French petite beans, golden zucchini, eggplant, leeks, mint and savory, more tomatoes, yukon gold potatoes, english cucumbers, beets and flowers. I am very happy we did this. I don't have the experience to compare with other CSA's. But I'm satisfied with ours. Fri Aug 01 19:09:41 -0700 2003 662555 0 Regina Levin 1 662813 I'm with Natural Harvest for the second year. I'm not sure I'll do this again next year, but it's far from the other horror stories some have related. Customer service is quite good in fact -- me missed our first pickup and they let us come out to the farm and pickup a replacement box. I'm not sure I'd do this again next year for a couple of reasons. One, the novelty factor of some of the unusual vegetables (garlic scapes, etc) is wearing off. Two, I'm often finding that using up all of the veggies is getting to be a grind, rather than the challenge it was the first year. Wed Aug 06 12:44:25 -0700 2003 662555 0 Lee Short