This is my first year purchasing a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share. We chose Sun Gold Farm on the recommendation of friends, alignment with their sustainable approach, and convenient local pick up. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. I enjoy visiting the farmers market and growing my own vegetables, but the idea of someone else deciding what I would eat? Made me nervous.
Each week we get one bag full of veggies. Quite unexpectedly, the surprise aspect has been one of my favorite parts. It has absolutely inspired me to eat more and a wider variety of vegetables than I would chose on my own. I think I can safely say I have eaten more cabbage this summer than in several years past put together. I’ve tried kohlrabi and all sorts of new kinds of cukes and squash.
The thing I have been most fascinated with so far is in bunch in the center of the photo above. It’s fresh garbanzo beans. We got a bunch of stalks with pods all over them. Inside the pod is a green bean. I’d only ever seen them in dried or canned form. They have some crunch to them, and are really tasty. Much better than the ones from the can.
Sun Gold sends a newsletter out each week where I learned most of the garbanzos are grown in hot climates, but they discovered they were able to grow them here by testing growing them from a bag of dried ones from the supermarket. We’ve enjoyed snacking on them like edamame as well as tossing them into salads.
The newsletter tells us what we are most likely to get in the bags for the week. It has stories about the farm and its history. Sometimes a recipe. We’ve started feeling connected to the place even though we have never seen it. We also follow reports on Facebook which talk more about the planting, watering, hay crop, and getting up in the middle of the night to protect the greenhouses.
Discovering any interesting vegetables this summer?
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