CSA and John and Kate Plus 8

I've always wanted to do a CSA (community supported agriculture) and never thought I'd have the capital to invest in a farm's yearly production. This spring we spent $400 on a share in a CSA and we're entitled to a box of farm-fresh produce each week for 20 weeks. So that's $20 per week on vegetables that I'm getting locally and organically.  There are good parts and bad parts to this.

Good:

-it's political: we're supporting a local farm (it's on the Eastern shore somewhere and we're invited to visit, but whatever.)

-it's healthy: lots of veggies we're forced to eat. No, I eat it. I try to force my family but they whine and cry about it and throw it on the floor. And the kids are even worse! 

-it's earth-friendly: the food is organic and I only have to make a 20 min round-trip drive every other Thursday to pick it up. On the weeks between, my friend Jenny picks it up since she's in the same CSA and we live like 2 miles apart, so I get it from her when I can. This week she held it for me until I got back on Sunday since we left Thursday morning. 

Without the CSA, I'd be buying grocery store produce and if you don't know what's wrong with that, I suggest that you read one of my most favorite books ever- "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver.  During the growing season I try to buy from farmers markets as much as I can but it's a further drive than this and I don't have time to do that every Saturday morning. Plus it seems like so much money if you hand over $20 each week, versus paying it all upfront and then believing this food months later is coming to you for free!

Bad: 

-selection: later I'm promised the summer and fall vegetables that we  all eat. For now though, we're given what's in season, which is tons and tons of mixed field greens. But I just can't shake my bad habit of eating out-of-season vegetables and foreign-grown fruit, whenever I please! Again, if you don't see how this is a bad habit, read that amazing book by Barbara Kingsolver. Books by Michael Pollan too, like "In Defense of Food". (thank you Jessie!) 

-yucky things: beets. radishes. weird weeds with little yellow flowers that I'm supposed to eat (flowers too!). more beets, more radishes. I've been giving them away to anyone who crosses my path.

-$20 each week-  this selection, these yucky things: I would never pay money for this! My husband pointed out that the wilted bunch of weeds that we eventually composted cost us $5 since it was a quarter of our share that week. Sucks.

Still, I'm hoping that this investment pays out. We didn't plant as much in our gardens this year since we're paying someone else to grow them. This is a load off of my back. And the bounty later in the summer will hopefully make up for these lean weeks. 

Mostly, this is a lesson in eating locally, which is really freakin hard. You eat what the Earth gives you, not what you can have trucked in from somewhere else in the world. My husband considers it to be good training for the zomb-pocalypse, when we'll have to recreate society and live like frontier people. 

best part of the day: talking and talking a mile a minute with my dearest friend Heather during their visit today. Her kids played with my kids so sweetly and my husband shouldered a lot of childcare so we could chat!

worst part of the day: teaching a Rainbarrel program at the nature center and only having 4 rainbarrels to offer 6 people. I felt so bad! 

thoughts of the day: John and Kate Plus 8: such a tragedy. It's one of my favorite shows and I know that they've been in the tabloids lately with suspicion that they're both cheating on the other. I don't follow tabloids but Heather does, and I knew I could count on her to give me the rundown on what's really going on. What I understand from a mix of the show and Heather's reporting is that their family life was stressful but surviving for several years of the show but then it took a downspin. He lost his job and so she stepped up her paid speaking engagements and paid book tours for family income. Now he's a stay-at-home dad (with two nannies) and she's touring the country (a lot) promoting their show and the three books that she wrote about being a mom to 2 sets of multiples (twins and sextuplets). 

Of course that's where things went wrong! She's now the breadwinner and this was not a choice, it just made the most sense. How could they not resent having to switch roles- he possibly feeling like a failure and she possibly resenting that she has to be away from her beloved kids so much?!  And they're stuck like this bc it really does make the most money sense for her to ride this promotional wave as long as she can for the financial good for the family. But I wish I could just rewind time back to season one when fortune didn't come with fame and they were happy just to squeak by. (and maybe I will since it's out on dvd) 

Once again, I see our lives reflected in their lives, we of the squeaking-by-season, and hope that if fame and fortune ever hit us, we don't lose what we value before we realize it.