Fall CSA
First Week

As I have noted many times, the ability to eat local falls off considerably once the Farmer's Markets ends, and my Oak Park market ended a week ago. To continue to eat local one has to work at finding sources as well as live off of products stored. Now, I have always been frustrated that there have not been more local sources to buy local all year round. For one thing, even in our northern climate, things continue to grow past October. For another thing, vendors can maintain good stores of items like apples, cabbages, onions and potatoes. Finally, I would hope that vendors could sell stocks of items preserved themselves. For instance, my beloved Hardin Farms froze or dried any fruit not sold in season; the problem is, Hardin does not market this stuff post Farmer Market. Besides these natural cold weather products, modern technology allows farmer's to grow certain items in greenhouses.

Farmer Vicki DOES do all of this with a fall-winter CSA. She is still picking items from her grounds. Her first box included turnips with greens, serrano peppers, chard and lettuce from her farm. From her sheds, we got potatoes, onions and squash--one large acorn and one spaghetti. From who knows where, we got one, still fresh, tomato and some very sweet for green, green peppers. It was more than enough product for a week. There was also a bunch of fresh herbs including rosemary, and cilantro. The products came in enough quantities that it would not just be CSA salad and CSA eggs for the week--the result of CSA boxes come insufficient amounts of stuff.

Next week's box arrives on Wednesday.