Comunity Supported Agriculture

This is a bit of a departure for me on the blog. I have been a vegetarian since 1983, but I fully support what Dave Reynolds is doing with his cattle business. I have met Dave. Besides raising longhorn cattle, he also breeds and trains Spanish Mustangs. He is good at both of these things. If I still ate meat, I would certainly be buying shares of Dave’s cattle.

We have participated in a CSA for produce several times. It was great! Once a week, during the growing season, we would pick up our box from someone’s garage. It was a lot of fun to see what each week brought. Some things were unusual and made us consider what to do with them, like jiquama. And I ended up eating more produce, as I didn’t have to think about what to buy or even go to the store. It was right there.

We no longer participate in a CSA, as we are expanding our backyard garden. We live in town on an 80′ x 80′ postage stamp lot. Yet our backyard garden of a few raised beds provided us with a lot of produce this year. Next year, it will be even more, as we remove more of the old, weedy lawn and convert that to vegetable beds. We had the ubiquitous zucchini, along with cantaloupes, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, broccoli, cabbage, potatoes, basil, strawberries, blueberries, mint, cilantro, apples and probably more that I can’t remember.

Here is another site to learn more about CSA. It is a great way to improve your health through eating more produce, while supporting your local economy and reducing impact on the planet. Besides … it’s just a lot of fun to eat something that you have grown yourself, especially just after it’s picked!