Farm to kitchen groups a great way to enjoy local produce
By Rachel Pinsky
Published: July 6, 2018, 6:01am
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A weekly bag of produce from Millennium Farms’ CSA program Rachel Pinsky Photo Gallery
A good way to get restaurant-quality produce, increase your vegetable intake and learn to prepare a variety of vegetables is to join a Community Supported Agriculture group (or CSA). A CSA works like a subscription. You pay a farmer at the beginning of a growing season and get a bag of produce regularly for a certain number of weeks. Clark County Grown has a list of local farms that offer a CSA on its website — http://clarkcountygrown.squarespace.com/csa/.
I’ve been a member of Millennium Farms’ CSA program for a couple of seasons. I buy a half share (six choices every other week) and that’s sufficient for my family of four — my kids aren’t big vegetable eaters (yet). The farm offers partial season subscriptions; check the website for current availability.
Prices depend on how much produce you want and for how long. A full share (12 weekly choices) is $34 per week. Before each distribution, Millennium Farms, which is in Ridgefield, emails a menu of fresh options and you choose which fruits and vegetables you want in your bag. They also offer free-range eggs ($5 a dozen) and heirloom chicken meat ($4.50 per pound) as add-ons.
It works best if you have a convenient pick-up site. Missy Stucky of Millennium Farms says “Most CSAs are only available at the family’s farm. Some offer off-site locations, and so potential members should state their home and/or work neighborhoods and let the farmer suggest an appropriate site if available.”
If you don’t have a desirable pickup site, you can organize one for your neighborhood, workplace, church, etc. Stucky told me, “We will add a pick-up site if we can get the equivalent of five shares to use that site, if a person or family is open to mentoring the site. A site with protection from sun and weather and them being able to let us know of any unclaimed bags are the desired requirements.”
So what is there to eat? One of my bags for the summer season included Granny Smith apples, asparagus, mesclun salad mix, baby potatoes, carrots and rainbow chard. It isn’t necessary to Google recipes and make Instagram-worthy meals with everything. This produce is farm fresh and doesn’t require a whole lot of handling.
Here’s what I did, for two weeks, with the items in my bag:
• I put the Granny Smith apples in a bowl on the table for my kids to take when they wanted a snack.
• I used the asparagus, carrots and rainbow chard to make red curry noodles with vegetables.
• I roasted the remaining asparagus and all the potatoes with a bit of olive oil and salt (most vegetables are good simply roasted this way).
• I made a simple vinaigrette (dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper) for the mesclun salad.
• I used most of the rainbow chard in smoothies (rainbow chard leaves, natural peanut butter, frozen bananas, almond milk and cinnamon).
• I gave my kids the carrots with some hummus (homemade, or Trader Joe’s has good hummus).
