This Week’s CSA Basket

Okay, the quality of food is better than the first few baskets, and by the 4th week, delivery was on time.

Here’s what the veggies looked like this week:

That’s Romana Italian flat green beans in the little greenish box. As you can see, there are also decent looking tomatoes. Also included are 3 straightneck yellow squash, onions, and a few sprigs of oregano. That’s kale in one of the gallon baggies and collards in the other.

We also got another dozen dirty eggs. Two were cracked and I immediately fed those to the dogs. How do I know what bacteria seeped into the eggs?

We also discovered one of the other eggs was bad when Young Son tried to make scrambled eggs this morning. He dropped it in with the other eggs before he noticed it, and the yuck spread throughout the mixture so thoroughly we had to throw the whole batch away. He now knows to crack them singly into a smaller bowl first to check their freshness. He’s spoiled because with our own eggs, if I don’t know for sure they’re freshly laid, I don’t put them in the fridge. They’re immediate dog food.

We get an email each week from these people doing the CSA and they are always sooooooo enthusiastic about what’s in the basket. Maybe I’m just too picky, but while some of it is looking decent this time, other things I think they’ve waited too long to pick. The Farmer wonders if this is their first year gardening. The people where he works make fun of the food in the basket. It’s not turning out quite as I’d hoped.

But there you have it, another $25 worth of eggs and vegetables.

Last Week’s CSA Produce

We finally got our produce from our CSA on Thursday. I took a bunch of pictures so you could see what we got. It comes in what I think is a half-bushel basket:
Peeking inside, you see the eggs and veggies. The first week we got some sausage, and last week there was some pork, but this week there was no meat included.
I spread out the vegetables to make it easier to see what was included. Besides the eggs, there was broccoli, radishes, 3 onions, a couple little boxes of sugar snap peas, a gallon baggie with kale, and another with lettuce.
Oh, and there were a couple of sprigs of some herb also.

As you can see, the lettuce didn’t fare too well being kept closed up in a bag and no refrigeration for 2 or 3 days. I threw it out for the peafowl to munch on.

The kale looked a little better, and the sugar snap peas were so-so.

The broccoli fascinated me, however. I don’t believe I’ve ever dealt with such limp broccoli before. The picture doesn’t really do it justice. You had to see it wobbling around, all flopped over, held upright only so far as the more rigid center stalk would keep it.

So there you have it, my $25 worth of veggies. Hopefully next week they’ll arrive on time and in better condition.

Update on CSA Delivery

Late last night I got another email from the guy who does the deliveries. He informed me he got to the store too late, it had already closed. Duh! Like we hadn’t figured THAT out!

Supposedly he’s going to drop the baskets off this morning. The store opens at 10am, so The Farmer can go pick it up before his dentist appointment today. (Lucky Farmer!)

And, also supposedly, he’s going to start delivering by noon so the baskets can be picked up any time after that, because in his words, the afternoon drop-off “just doesn’t leave enough time for anything out of the ordinary to happen and get taken care of.”

It took him three weeks to figure that out??? Apologies aside, why did he ever think that would work in the first place? If everyone didn’t get there at the same time, like minutes before the store closed, you missed the delivery and wasted your time, gas and money. (I might also mention that we were never told at what time the delivery would be made anyway, just what day.)

I hope this goes smoother for the rest of the season.

Waiting on CSA Deliveries

I had hoped to have a picture to put on here this evening of our latest batch of goodies from our CSA (Community Suported Agriculture) membership. This is our third week, and frankly, it’s not going as well as I’d hoped. It’s not the goodies we’re getting that’s the problem, but trying to connect to get them!

First off, they deliver to various areas. When we signed up, we understood there was going to be a drop-off in the town where The Farmer works. Before I ever signed us up, he agreed to pick the food up on his lunch hour, or after work, so no problem there.

The first glitch was the drop-off point. The store which is the pick-up point isn’t in the same town at all, but in the next one over. Okay, we made that adjustment, though it makes it harder and less cost effective since he has to drive further to pick it up.

The next problem is the timing. The first week the guy delivering the food baskets had to work through the delivery day, and stuff didn’t get delivered until the next day. Okay, beginning of the season, glitches happen, move on.

The next week the Farmer called to check if the food had been delivered before going to pick it up. He called right before he left work, and it still wasn’t there. Evidently the guy came soon after, and the storeowner called The Farmer on his cell phone to let him know the food was there, but he was already on his way home. Considering he was more than half way home and considering the price of gas, he didn’t turn around but figured he’d pick it up the next day.

Here we are on the third week, and due to Memorial Day our delivery date was changed again, and we could live with that, but it’s not knowing what time of day the stuff will be there that’s a major problem. The store closes at 5pm, and The Farmer was there at 4:30 this evening, and the guy still hadn’t delivered the stuff. I suppose he made it there before closing time, but then how is anyone supposed to get their stuff until the next day?

That means the greens and vegetables are going to sit in their basket yet another day. I understand they have to be picked one day and delivered the next, but the way it’s going, it’s the following evening of the third day before I finally get them. The produce has lost quite a bit of freshness by that time, especially since it’s not being refrigerated.

Maybe this is how all CSA’s are run, and maybe it works for people who can drop everything to go pick stuff up whenever they get around to delivering it, but it’s not working that well for us. The timing needs to be consistent. I’m beginning to regret I ever signed up for this. It’s not cheap, but for FRESH veggies I figured it was worth it.

If this doesn’t get better, I’m afraid I’m going to feel like it’s not worth the extra expense and trouble for tired vegetables. And if I feel that way, and really wanted to do this, seems like it would be awfully tough to get people just learning to appreciate eating fresh vegetables to bother with it.

How about it, how does this work for other people? Am I expecting too much, or are there better ways of doing this?

Picking up Pastured Poultry & Delivering a Single Sheep

It’s been a busy weekend, and it’s not even over yet since we’ve still got Memorial Day!

Friday afternoon I went out the back roads through places I’ve never been, and ended up at Mountain Fork Farm to pick up my order of pastured broilers.

Yes, I know we have chickens here on our farm. And yes, I thought about raising some for the freezer. There’s just one catch, but it’s a BIG catch. If I raise them, I have to process them, which is a nice way of saying I have to chop their heads off, scald, pluck and gut each chicken. I’ve done it in my time, but at this stage I don’t have the stamina for such a big project, so I decided to support some other farmer who does.

It was a nice drive, and what I saw of the farm was gorgeous. They had a canopy set up a little ways down their driveway, right before you go through the gate to their property, with chickens in coolers ready for pickup. I wish I’d thought to ask how many acres they have. It has to be pretty good sized, because I couldn’t even see their house from where I was.

The first thing you see is a big greenhouse in a field to the right of the driveway. They also sell a wide variety of vegetables that are grown using sustainable agriculture methods, so no doubt get a lot of use from the greenhouse.

They have a shed not far from the greenhouse with big coolers for the chickens and such.

There was a big field to the left, and the road winds on back through the trees. I could hear chickens way off, and I know from their website they raise turkeys, Berkshire hogs, Dexter cattle and horses. I was disappointed not to see any of that, but maybe I’ll be able to go back again another time.

Saturday I spent catching up on work in the house, with laundry and cleaning and baking a couple of Cherry-Orange coffee cakes, several pizza crusts, bread for us, and “Birdie bread” – made with whole grains and veggies, cut up in cubes, and fed to my picky parrot.

Today we delivered a ewe to a friend’s farm way out back of beyond. You even have to drive through a creek to get to the farm. I reckon they don’t go anywhere during hard rains! They were supposed to be home by mid-morning, having gone to a Fiber Festival earlier this weekend. We got there mid-afternoon, but nobody greeted us but the dogs.

Of course, that’s a pretty big greeting, considering they are HUGE Great Pyrenees, and there were about ten of them prancing around us. They will not, however, win any awards for vicious watchdogs, as they were far more interested in seeing if we would pet them. Of course, we’ve been there before, but even the young pups we’d not seen before were eager for their share of attention.

We wandered around the yard for a while. The dogs were all barking and the one inside was going nuts. I knocked at the door. No answer. What to do???

Fortunately, they have several pens, and there was one unoccupied behind the house, complete with shade tree, so we put the ewe in there, got her a bucket of water, left a note in the screen door, and went back home.

The funny thing is, a couple hours after we got home Kim called me. I figured she was going to comment on the new sheep and tell me where she’d been. Wrong! I said, “Did you find the present we left for you?”

Turns out she hadn’t, and she’d been home the whole time. I’m not sure where she was working, but her mother was in the house and never realized we were out there, or unloading sheep in the pen right by the house. I figured there was no way they could NOT know we were there considering how the dogs were carrying on, including the one in the house. We’d left a note in the screen door and left a sheep, so there’s no denying we were there!

At any rate, the sheep got delivered, and I got to check out a bunch of the ewes and lambs she had running around.

We’ll do the check and registration thing to each other through the mail, so … all’s well that ends well?

We tried a different route home, and I couldn’t resist snapping a picture of this lovely red barn we passed. Oh… and Robin… you won’t believe how many wild turkeys we saw on the way to and from their farm! They never stood still long enough for a picture, but I promise, we really did see LOTS of them!