Being vegan, you would expect me to eat quite a few fruits and veggies. While I do indeed love these things, I don’t eat nearly as much fresh vegetables as I should. One of our joint New Years Resolutions was to have at least one vegetable with dinner every night. For the most part we have been doing well on this resolution but we may have found something that may make it even easier to achieve our goal. To what do I refer? Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), of course!
I’m not sure how Colleen found out about it but at the beginning of the year, she suggested that we join the Be Wise Ranch CSA. I had looked into this a while back but figured Colleen would think I was a bit crazy so I never brought it up to her. I quickly agreed that it would be a fun thing to try so we decided to start up a 4 week “trial” membership.
Unless you are totally into supporting local farmers (which I don’t think has made it into our nation’s collective mindset just yet), you may be wondering what a CSA. Basically, you are buying a share of a local farm. In return, you get a weekly (or biweekly, if you so choose) shipment of fruits and veggies from that farm. With Be Wise, you can get either a small share (designed for 2 adults + child) or a large share (designed for a family of 4, I believe). The shipments don’t just arrive at your door, though. They have designated pick-up locations that you sign up for and then go there on the designated day of the week. For us, that means going over to Mesa every Thursday between 4:30 and 7.
We sent our CSA application in at the beginning of January but after a few weeks and no word back, we started to worry. We checked Be Wise’s website and we noticed a note saying that after January 15 they wouldn’t be accepting new members until March. Luckily we had submitted our application well before that so I sent them an e-mail to see what was going on. Quite naturally, the next day (before they could even respond to our e-mail) we received our membership information in the mail.
Initially we signed up for the pick-up spot in Clairemont Mesa but Sandra from Be Wise informed us that there is a “secret” UCSD-only pick-up spot at Mesa so we switched over to that one. Today was our first day to pick up our small share so I hurried over around 6pm (thanks to a reminder from Colleen) to pick it up. I was a little confused when I got there since there was no one around and the stuff didn’t appear to be in plain sight. Needless to say, there is some serious honor-system business going on there :-p
Overall, I was pretty impressed with what we received:
- Lettuce
- Bok Choy
- Dill
- Parsley
- Red Beets
- Carrots (the kick-ass fat ones, too!)
- Apples
- Oranges
- Pears
An onion would have been nice, as would some broccoli (part of the “large” share I think) but overall a good selection. To make things interesting, the share changes throughout the year as new fruits/veggies come into/go out of season. (It’s all local, remember?)
Colleen and I are pretty pumped about all our fresh produce. If you haven’t looked into it, you should see if there is a CSA in your community too.
Now on to eating those veggies…
- Sat
