I was looking at my blog yesterday and I could not believe how pitiful my 2012 activity has been. Well, there's a valid reason for my inactivity--not much in the way of local food!
The mister and I have always said we were incredibly lucky to have year-round farms in our mid-Atlantic area. We've been part of year-round CSAs for several years now. These CSAs have been with different farmers--veggie, fruit, a combination of the two, but we've had local food at our disposal pretty much year-round.
Late fall, as we were preparing to start up our winter CSA, our farmer sent an email to shareholders indicating that unforseen circumstances prevented the farm from offering a winter CSA that year. This had me incredibly bummed, but grateful for their honesty and willingness to offer refunds to all shareholders. It could have been worse--we could have been 4, 6 or 8 weeks into the season, and received veggies that were sub-par.
All of this is part of the risk/reward of participating in a CSA. Some years, the bounty is good, REALLY good, and other years--either due to drought, too much heat, or too much rain (like August 2011)--the farmers can experience challenges and the harvest is not the best.
I felt like our winter dinners were repeat after repeat and my readers would not want to see the same dishes week after week. I was able to supplement with bi-weekly trips to our winter market and regular shopping days at the Fair Food Farmstand in Philadelphia.
Other than the fluke 80 degree days in March, it seems like we are getting the chance to experience an actual spring this year. Of course, our winter was so mild, it was spring-like on many days in January and February. We are in the early stages of our summer CSA, so expect to see more posts and photos of our shares.
I don't expect another haitus like this past winter, so I hope that you will come back and visit throughout the next 6 months.
No comments:
Post a Comment