What is the good, the bad, and the ugly of joining a CSA?

I stopped because I love going to the farmers market too much. We were members of a fantastic CSA for a year and while there was *nothing* wrong with the CSA itself, I realized that I get too much pleasure out of taking DS and shopping the farmers market each week. And since I was still going each week to get meats, etc., not buying the vegetables there didn't really help me out in any way.

Now, if I didn't enjoy that process, or didn't have the option of great local farmers markets, I would stick with a CSA. It's undeniably convenient and it's important to me to support local farmers.

I liked it at first, but then I kept getting repeats and sometimes the amount wasn't enough for what I wanted to do with it. Like I would get one onion. I typically go through onions pretty fast, so I was still having to buy them at the store. I'm a big vegetable eater, and really, the portions just were not big enough for two people. I prefer to go buy my own depending on what I want to cook that week.

A lot of people in my area are doing FarmFresh2You. It's a box of veggies that they deliver to you. You tell them if you want weekly, monthly, etc and you can even customize it so if you don't want radishes or kale you won't get them in your box. That plus the convenience of delivery is making me consider signing up.

One puzzled Brit here scratching her head and thinking that this was about the Child Support Agency!

I joined two different CSA's and both experiences were different.

The first one I joined and split the cost of a large family share with a friend. It was a 30 minute drive and she and I alternated weeks for pickup. You had to do some of the picking yourself, blackberries, green beans, snip herbs, pick flowers. We had an abundance and variety of produce, some fruit, flowers and herbs. We had more than we could finish in a week and I would give some to neighbors. It was great! I would have done it again but my friend decided not to continue and the driving every week wasn't something I wanted to do.

I found a CSA closer to my home. Most of the produce was brought in. The farm only provided corn and tomatoes. The price was almost the same, the produce much less. You would get a single eggplant. If I wanted to make eggplant parm, I'd have to go to the grocery store to buy more. I did not have enough produce to finish our the week.

The CSA I joined this year is very different than ones mentioned here. I get to pick out what I want. We have a variety of choices and get "tickets" to choose what we want. For example, last week (I have a half share and get three tickets) one ticket=2 heads of lettuce. We got to choose from 3 different kinds of lettuce, there was asparagus, red potatoes, bok choy, garlic scapes. This week we have some of the same plus swiss chard, beets, and more kinds of lettuce.

It's 15 minutes from me. We can only go on T/Th from 2-7 and have to pick the day. But we can change it if needed.  

We also have awesome farmer's markets here so I shop those also.

CSA = Community Supported Agriculture.

I was in one for several years. I loved having all that fresh produce and trying new things. It worked for us when the kids were younger and pretty much ate what I made for them. 2 years ago, they developed a will of their own because in the CSA we belonged to, you can't pick what you want, we ended up with lots of waste. I decided that it was less expensive to shop at our farmers market or the nearby organic farm and buy only what we like in amounts we will use.

I did a CSA for about 4 years. It was very well run. I had limited choices. There would be say 5 spots and each spot had 2-4 items to pick from. There would almost always be a bag of salad mix also. At the end of the tables, where everything was laid out, they had a swap box.

It was definitely worth my money. I stopped because, as my boys got to be older, it got harder to fit in the pickup time.

We've belonged to one for about 4 years now. I love it. It's a local farm (not organic) and I'd been going there for about 25 years before they started the CSA. I go every Saturday morning. They have bins of produce set out with a sign saying what it is and how much to take. If you don't want it, you don't have to take it. It's a pretty good variety -- of course we get a LOT of greens at this time of year because that's what is being harvested. You follow the growing season. I've never had a problem of it not being enough to feed my family of four, i.e. we always get 2-3 eggplant, or 4 zucchini. All the leftovers from the CSA go to a local soup kitchen Saturday afternoon, so if I can't make it to pick up my share I don't feel so badly.

I love ours because they're a big fruit farm. Last week I got 4 quarts of strawberries! Soon it will be pick-your-own rasperries, then blueberries, peaches, apples, and pears. They add in things like jars of their honey, items from a new bakery supplier, local eggs or milk, tickets to the corn maze. Usually something to try every week. They also offer free coffee, lemonade, and pastries while you're there.

I end up freezing a lot of things to use over the winter. We'll eat beets, greens, corn, roasted tomatoes, and frozen strawberries through the winter.

It's been awesome for us -- I try all kinds of things I never knew existed -- who knew we'd love kohlrabi and pea shoots?

DH and I enjoyed the experience.  We've done it twice.  We looked forward to trying vegetables that we normally wouldn't have bought.  The repeats can get overwhelming.  For instance, we got a huge cabbage last week.  I made a big batch of stuffed cabbages.  We got another huge cabbage this week. 

By mid-summer I'm freezing a lot.

I love love love my csa.. and they deliver. Mine is not just one farm but a group that do it together, so the variety is good. The price is good.

I love getting things I would never otherwise get. Last week they had lemon cucumbers, I had never seen or heard of them. They look like lemons but are cucumbers! I made a tomato, basil and mozzarella salad with them. IT looked beautiful. Tasted good too!

I know DH's cousins do it and really like it - it's called something different here, I can't think of the name though. DH is too picky so we just get what we need at a local farmers market or the store.