Our Local CSA

After years of talking about it, we finally did it. We joined a local Community Supported Agriculture group.

I love when life pieces fall into place.

Two years ago I posted on Facebook that we were looking for a CSA. A high school friend responded to let me know her family ran a local farm and had just started a CSA.

Fast forward to this year. I had planned on joining (like so many things in life) this spring. Life was busy. We had a new baby. I was going back to work. I forgot. It was that simple.

Fast forward to last week. A new juice bar opened here in town. While visiting (my 2nd trip, Christian’s 3rd), Christian noticed a box of carrots. They were from New Earth Farm. He bikes by New Earth Farm every weekend on his 40 mile bike rides through Pungo. He found their Facebook page. And they had just posted that they still had openings in their CSA. A phone call and an email later, we had joined. During that phone conversation, Christian learned that they used to live near the home of my high school friend (the one whose family owns the local farm). Well they didn’t really live near her, they lived with her. We just joined the CSA I had been wanting to join for the past two years.

On Wednesday we will visit the farm and pick up our first box of veggies. We have 16 more weeks of fresh picked produce to dictate our dinners for the week. I can not wait. Since I read the book, And I Shall have some Peace There, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling I got when I read about her garden.

But I had lost my taste for all of it – every sushi joint and deli, and every franchise faux restaurant that Midtown Manhattan had to offer its weary workforce, and the ultra fancy ones we went to for meetings or to entertain business associates, too. I wanted none of their possibilities, ut now, in my simple little kitchen, I stand awestruck, refrigerator and pantry closet doors ajar, and dream of what it all adds up to. Polenta competes with orecchiette for my supper’s foundation, or will it be quinoa instead? And what of the accompanying sauce, something based on my garden tomatoes, maybe? – or homegrown garlic and something green (pak choi or brussels sprouts or chard or kale or collards or bush beans) and some delicious local cheese?

“Margaret lets the garden tell her what to eat,” Sara Kate, a blogger friend who visited recently and wrote about me said, and she was right; it does and to the palette I add every color and shape of beans and grains from my once-every-ten-days run to town. ~ Margaret Roach

I read that paragraph, and my hands longed to play in the dirt. I dreamed of a back yard garden and a dinner made from foods I have grown. While our yard won’t allow us to grow a garden of our own (too many trees, not enough sun), we can do the next best thing. This summer our CSA pick-up will tell us what to eat.

I can not wait to get started. We will also volunteer our time through the summer. Our entire family will be helping box up veggies, tend to the garden, and plant seeds.

This new chapter of our life feels perfect.

All photos are from the New Earth Farm Facebook page.