Garden, Take 1

This year we decided to forgo the CSA we have belonged to for the past two years. The reason? We've finally gone as local as local can get and planted our own vegetable garden! My husband and I have been wanting to grow something more than tomatoes for quite a while, but the summer always seemed to slip away. And with our CSA, we always had plenty of local, organic vegetables. However, this year we were determined to make it on our own.

[Don't get me wrong: I loved our CSA. But it was a bit far for us to travel (opposite side of the county) and I felt that now that I have an honest-to-goodness yard, it should be used for more than growing patchy grass.]

In our garden we planted: broccoli, cabbage, collards, eggplant, cucumbers, romaine and red leaf lettuce, bell peppers and tomatoes. I'm looking forward to eating my first salad completely from the garden! I'm already planning for next year. I'd love to include some squash and potatoes...mmm.

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Basically, a farmer will sell shares of his or her crops to consumers for the growing season. Instead of grocery shopping, you receive distributions of crops once a week or so, depending on your CSA arrangement. By doing this, the consumer shares in the risks inherent to farming - there are no guarantees.  Farmers feed us, after all - why should they be the only ones taking on the risk? This arrangement benefits both consumer and farmer alike. The farmer has a steady income and can plan for future seasons. The consumer receives a greater quantity of vegetables when the crop prospers and a lesser quantity when it doesn't.  For example, last year's late blight decimated the tomato crop, and we received virtually no tomatoes. In contrast, the year before had us nearly sick of tomatoes they were so plentiful. (Sick of tomatoes? I know, it sounds impossible...but trust me, I couldn't use them fast enough!)

In closing, let me say how great our CSA was/is. We belonged to Restoration Farm located in Old Bethpage, NY. The farm is beautiful and the growers, Caroline and Dan, are amazing. I highly recommend it if you live in Nassau County or even western Suffolk County. The farm is on the grounds of Old Bethpage Village Restoration, a recreation of a mid-19th-century American village. The majority of the buildings are genuine - they were moved to the site from their previous locations and arranged to represent a typical rural Long Island farm village of that time period. Each season the village holds Civil War reenactments, the Long Island agricultural fair and other events. Both the farm and the village are fantastic places to visit if you are in the area.