After one month of placing orders through our local buying club, we”re into a comfortable routine.
By Monday afternoon each week, we”ve received an e-mail update. Orders are due by Tuesday night.
A truckload of produce arrives in Clearlake every Thursday afternoon; it was picked fresh that very morning at a regional farm.
By the following afternoon, somebody in my family will likely have ideas for some recipes.
I was somewhat nervous at first, about community-supported agriculture, about abdicating so much control over what goes into my refrigerator.
Working with a CSA supplier isn”t like going to the store, where fruits” and vegetables” shelf life has been artificially extended with freezing and preservatives.
With CSA, your supply is tied directly to the growing season.
Speaking as somebody who has grown up with considerable food anxieties, this was a huge leap of faith. What if my box was filled with produce that I didn”t like? There could be no substitutions with things that are still in the ground.
It was rough, when growing up, eating meals with the rest of my family. It was an enormous ordeal just to swallow certain foods. The wrong texture or flavor made me gag. My family frequently got angry with me for being such a “picky eater.”
Meals were such an ordeal for me that it was an enormous relief to be served the foods that I liked. Conversely, how devastating it was for me to be denied those foods!
I became upset one time at a Parkhill family reunion because the fried chicken was all gone before I could have any. The only things left were foods I didn”t like.
I remember extreme disapproval on the part of my adult relatives. They may even have used the word “brat.”
Variations on this scenario played out constantly as I was growing up.
Even now that I”m an adult, there are certain textures, certain tastes, which I am not able to handle. Fortunately, as I discovered when I was willing to try new things, there are as many crisp and sharp, smooth and warm textures as there are clammy, chunky and slimy ones.
Preparation also counts. There is an enormous difference between marinara sauce and a raw tomato. Between a baked potato and potato salad.
Here”s what we looked forward to in our CSA boxes for Thursday, July 31: cucumbers, German butterball potatoes, Nantes carrots, mixed heirloom tomatoes, red torpedo onions, garlic and parsley. We also anticipated red flame grapes, cherries and rainbow chard in a supplemental fruit and vegetable box.
Out of the entire shipment, the majority were things that I like! And that mix has been consistent. No matter what plants are ripening at any given time, at least some of them produce foods that I can eat.
My family has noticed a positive difference in eating foods that are fresh and organic. More “life” remains in the plant and is passed directly to us. And because they reached us so much sooner after being removed from the ground, they retain freshness that much longer.
Change comes slowly. But change is happening and, turns out that this change is good.
For more information about the Lake County Community Co-Op and its weekly buying club, visit www.lakeco-op.org.
And if you”d like to put faces to the growers of local and regional produce, visit one of our county”s farmers” markets, taking place from 5 to 8 p.m. each Friday at Austin Park in Clearlake and 8 a.m. to noon Saturdays at Steele Wines in Finley.
Contact Cynthia Parkhill at cparkhill@clearlakeobserver.com.
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