The Communist Vegetable Collective

Since I so often mention my CSA basket, I thought that I might also dedicate a post to it. Community Supported Agriculture is a program that has city folk support a farmer by buying shares of his harvest in advance, and thereby giving him the money he (or she!) needs to tend the farm, buy equipment, and hire farmhands. My friend Dave likes to refer to this as the Communist Vegetable Collective. The farmer delivers the vegetables harvested each week and we, the recipients, enjoy a constantly changing supply of healthy food that has been farmed organically and sustainably. Not only that, we also have the pleasure of knowing that we've kept a farm in business for an entire season.

It also turns out to be incredibly cheap. I split my share with a friend: we each pay $210 for the season, which goes from June to November. This works out to be around $8 a person per week. Yesterday, our share included six zucchini, a bunch of Chioggia beets, a bunch of Bright Lights chard, five tomatoes, a basket of tomatillos, several poblano peppers, a bunch of flat-leaf parsley, six zucchini, one head of red cabbage, a bunch of Cosmic Purple carrots (purple on the outside, orange on the inside!), four Orient Express eggplant, and four yellow frying peppers. The CSA adjusts their prices on a sliding scale so that low-income families pay less, while receiving the same amount of vegetables.

On the days when my CSA delivery matches the ingredient list of a recipe on my radar for that week, I feel like the universe is coming together in a particularly lovely way.