Late fall/winter CSA?

[wheeiminvisible.livejournal.com]

Hi everyone,

I did CSA for the first time this summer, and have gotten hooked. Mine ends some time next month, and I'm really going to miss it! I get mine from Farmer Dave's, and I plan to continue buying from them, but they only offer a July-October share. I'd like to fill in at least some of that gap with a winter CSA from another farm. Any recommendations?

Thanks!

Comments

[magid.livejournal.com]

Enterprise Farm (http://enterpriseproduce.com/farmshare/index.htm) has a year-round share. However, in the winter, some things are sourced from farther away (as far south as FL, but keeping to the east coast).

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Here's a posting listing different winter shares available:

http://knowyourfoodboston.blogspot.com/2009/09/time-to-order-winter-shares.html

Drumlin Farm
Enterprise Farm
The Food Project
Heaven's Harvest Farm
Red Fire Farm
Stone Soup Farm

Not all of them are throughout the winter, but they're all at least November & December.

Boston Organics offers a "dogma" box which is as locally sourced as possible

And the farmer's market in Davis Square continues until the day before Thanksgiving. In past years I have stocked up on carrots, potatoes, apples and cabbages from the farmers there.

[obie119.livejournal.com]

I do the Enterprise Farm Winter CSA and apparently with each winter, more things will be local, as they build up a solid customer base with demand for local farmers to produce storage crops (root veggies mainly). There is always citrus from Florida, which is fine with me because we would buy citrus anyway, and doing it through the CSA means I'm supporting a smaller farm more directly than if I bought it at the store. Besides, although I'm not a stickler for organic, I prefer that my citrus be organic when possible. (theirs are)

It's cool to watch the old-fashioned local-based economy rebuild itself as consumer desires change.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_meej_/]

We also did the Enterprise Winter CSA this past year. In addition to the "kinda local but not exactly" question, we also found that it was a lot more monotonous than summer CSA's, for obvious reasons - a lot of the dropoff each week was really repetitive. "Here's this week's carrots and potatoes, this week's bunch of kale, this week's citrus, a head of lettuce, and what's our one surprise?" sort of feeling. There are only so many crops that travel well and can be harvested that time of year, so it's not a criticism, exactly - after all, they were getting the best selection they could - but it *is* something to be aware of.

(And as a plus, some of those "single surprises" were things like fresh organic and as-local-as-possible avocados, so!)

[magid.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping that this year there will be more things that I missed last year, including winter squash, turnips, rutabagas, beets, and so on. I mean, yeah, still root/storage veggies, but a bit more variety.

[pearlythebunny.livejournal.com]

If you get one of those Somerville Local First coupon books that came out this weekend, at Enterprise Farm you can get 10 percent off the September-November share, or one week free of the Winter/Spring share (December-May).

I got my coupon book at Eat at Jumbo's in Ball Square, but you can get them all over Davis Square, too. (They have discount coupons for lots of local restaurants and stores.) And they're free!

[obie119.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, people would definitely need to be prepared for the fact that winter veggies are never going to have the excitement that comes with spring and summer - but then again, there's something cool about that. I mean, a world in which a parsnip causes great rejoicing (it was the first local harvest of the year!) is a new one for me, and it's neat to be that easily amused :) I actually was sad last year that there weren't as many root vegetables as I had hoped; it looks like there's remedying that this year.

And by the end of the CSA period, I was so thrilled to get back to farmers market season, which is a much better fit for our lifestyle (out many nights, so we would definitely get behind on eating our CSA-share!)

On a completely unrelated note...

[balsamicdragon.livejournal.com]

_awesome_ user name :)

[wheeiminvisible.livejournal.com]

Thanks a lot, everyone! I've decided to go with Enterprise Farms -- the only downside to it is that the proportion of local food isn't quite as high as I'd like, but as someone else pointed out, it'll get more local each year as more people participate, so I'll do my part! I always end up buying citrus in the winter anyway, so now I'll be getting my grapefruits and oranges from small organic farms, which is nice.

Also, thanks for the heads up about the Somerville Local First coupon books -- I need to track one of those down so I can get the discount.