No CSA in 2023!

As we started the tear-out of our garden this past weekend, my gardening partner-in-crime and I talked about our harvests, our gardening plans for 2023 and the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share, which we had split.

While we loved the you-pick events and last year the CSA was a great way to try some new veggies and feel more connected to garden/farm/harvesting healthier foods, this past summer has not been as good of an experience.

With my return to the office and her travel, it became more of a challenge to balance picking up the Wednesday share and attending the you-pick events (we picked green beans and peas together, but she raided the corn and I'm not sure either of us will do the apple or pumpkin pick this coming weekend).

Last year, they also supplemented each month with meat from Von Hanson's and bread from Great Harvest Bread co. This year, we just got a $20 voucher to each, which wasn't nearly as exciting!

And frankly, I think the CSA is getting the worst of the produce the farm produces, while Pahl's is sending the better stuff to Cub Foods and other resellers. A lot of the produce we get is bruised, battered, and overripe. And not much of it is the kind of produce that we would have picked up if we were at a farmer's market. In fact, it's mainly been green beans, corn, kale, and poblanos... the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant were all well past their picked by dates in quite a few boxes, and we don't eat much in the way of collard greens.

Yesterday, I went to the Sunday Savage farmer's market, and got 2 bunches of kale for $2 each, and it was way more and way healthier than anything in a CSA box this year (yay for Kale chips -- the photo below is Farmer's Market Kale!).

So, in 2023, we will continue the garden, and will supplement it with trips to the farmer's markets. And if we really want to pick apples or pumpkins, we will go to an orchard, at a time when it's not overcrowded and picked over!

In all, I think this will be a great strategy for us, yielding the food we want to eat or preserve, in better condition and timing, and will save us both quite a bit of money.

So, this Wednesday will be our final week for the CSA, and I'm going to be glad to not have that obligation hanging over our heads every Wednesday.

Thanks for stopping by!