Community Supported Agriculture – A local produce adventure in every box

It's late-January, and a handful of purple and gold potatoes still remains from my great produce adventure of 2014. Last year for the first time my husband David and I signed up for a Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, subscription. Over the past seven months, we’ve cooked and eaten better—and more deliciously—than ever before!

CSA’s allow people to receive a regular supply of produce from a farm near where they live. It’s a direct line to locally grown food. For the duration of the growing and harvest season, you receive a weekly or biweekly box of whatever veggies happen to be ready for picking. You pay for the full season’s produce up-front, essentially becoming an investor in the success of that particular farm. In exchange, you get to know exactly where your food is coming from, and since it was usually picked the day before, you can be sure you’re getting the freshest vegetables available.

Last year, having just moved to Downers Grove from Chicago the year before, we discovered that a farming operation outside Rockford, Angelic Organics, had just started making deliveries to our area. Angelic Organics is a biodynamic farm that has been supplying organic, sustainably grown vegetables to the Chicago area since 1991. Dave and I already visited local farmers’ markets, grew some of our own veggies in the backyard, and tried to cook with the produce that was in season during the warm months. We decided to take the plunge and signed up to receive a biweekly box starting in June and going through the fall.

An area family had volunteered their house to be the delivery site for Downers Grove. After we picked up our first box—marking our name off the honor-system list on their porch—opening it up was a bit like Christmas morning. The box was packed to the brim with two heads of lettuce, broccoli, a bunch of radishes, beets, scallions, parsley, and a summer squash. It was also stuffed with three types of greens we’d never tried before: Chinese cabbage, mizuna, and red choi. I was making spaghetti that night and immediately sliced up and cooked the summer squash with some olive oil and spices, then made a green salad with the lettuce and radishes. Our first CSA meal was a success!

Next came planning how to use the rest of the veggies, including those colorful mystery greens. Fortunately, we had help from a free online recipe service called Local Thyme that was available through Angelic Organics. Each week, Local Thyme put out a meal plan with recipes that would use all the items in our box, including main dishes, side dishes, and sometimes drinks and desserts! Meatless and/or gluten-free versions of each recipe were provided, so Dave and I (who are vegetarian) had it easy.

We learned that mizuna is a Japanese plant with a peppery flavor similar to arugula and that it’s very tasty sautéed with garlic and served over pasta. As the weeks went by, many new surprises arrived in our boxes that allowed us to get acquainted with other produce we’d never tasted before—from kohlrabi to garlic scapes to celeriac. We learned other things we’d been missing out on for years: You can eat carrot tops! (They taste like carrots.) And we tried recipes that ranged from black bean, green pepper, and corn enchiladas in June to butternut squash and kale flatbreads in November.

All of it was delicious. In fact, the entire summer and fall became a cooking and eating extravaganza beyond our wildest dreams. Meanwhile, we got a newsletter tucked in each of our CSA boxes, updating us on what was happening at the farm and how the crops were progressing with pictures of the crew at work.

Dave and I set a goal at the start of our CSA deliveries to not buy any produce from the grocery store from mid-June through mid-November. When we rolled into the week before Thanksgiving, we had met that goal easily. Not only were we able to connect with and support an organic and sustainable local farmer, but we actually ended up saving money. Our grocery bills were significantly lower throughout those six months—even after we factored in the cost of the subscription.

Needless to say, we’ve signed up for our next CSA season in 2015, and we can’t wait to open up that first box to see what’s inside.

~Vera Miller