Back in January I was messing around on the internet, and I stumbled across something I had never heard before: CSA.  Now, I knew what a Farmer’s Market was, but I had never heard of this concept.  For those of you who were like me and have no idea what it is, CSA simply stands for Community-Supported Agriculture.  This cool program allows you to pay a local farm a fee and then when the harvest begins, they give you a share of whatever they grew.  Neat, huh?

I decided to do some digging and found a website dedicated to CSAs and other services called Local Harvest.  From their CSA page all you have to do is type in your location and it will list all the CSAs in your area and some facts about them (prices, what they grow, etc).  Once you get there, you usually have to put in some legwork, contact the farm, etc.  I chose the Bryan Family Farm and I have had a good time communicating with them so far and really look forward to my first pickup!

I know that if you’ve been looking you may be shocked at the price… they usually range between $250 and $500, but this isn’t as bad as it seems.  Let’s look at mine:

$300 (Half Share) / 20 weeks = $15.00 /wk

That’s not bad for fresh, locally grown veggies.  My plan is to go early every Saturday, pick up my box, then hit the Farmer’s Market.  Once I’m done there I’ll go home and work out my meals for the week based on all the goodies I picked up.  Not only will I be supporting a local farm, but I most likely will end up spending less on food for the time the CSA runs.  It’s a good experiment and trust me, I’ll update my blog each week to show off what I got!

Quick note, my thumbnail image is a picture of last year’s raspberry crop the Bryan’s posted… I hope I get some of those!!  So does anyone out there have any experience with a CSA to share with us?  I’d love to see how others have done!!