Adventures and Thoughts of Team Cross

It is hard to believe it is CSA time again. We kept the same arrangements as last year, splitting a Harmony Valley Farms CSA with our friends – the Deckers. In case you forgot, a CSA is Community Supported Agriculture. Harmony Valley describes it as:

It is sometimes described as a vegetable co-op, a weekly box delivery, a vegetable of the week club, or a produce subscription program, but we refer to it as Community Supported Agriculture, CSA.Families or individuals join our farm to receive weekly or bi-weekly deliveries of the fantastic organic produce we grow here at Harmony Valley Farm. Whatever is ripe and delicious for the week, goes into the box: washed, chilled and carefully packed. Then we deliver it to a neighborhood near you, if you live in or near Madison, Mazomanie,Viroqua and Onalaska or La Crosse, Wisconsin or The Twin Cities .The variety and quality – ask our members – is unmatched! We support the community with great, organic food and the community supports us!

Wikipedia:

Community-supported agriculture (in Canada Community Shared Agriculture) (CSA) is a socio-economic model of agriculture and food distribution. A CSA consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation where the growers and consumers share the risks and benefits of food production. CSAs usually consist of a system of weekly delivery or pick-up of vegetables and fruit in a vegetable box scheme, sometimes including dairy products and meat.

Box 1 contained:

• Ramps
• Chives
• Parsnips
• Rhubarb
• Sorrel
• Spinach
• Sunchokes
• Sauté Mix
• French Breakfast Radish
• Red Russian Kale
• Willow or Dogwood

We had a great weekend at “our farm” – Harmony Valley Farms. We road tripped down the Mississippi River to find our farm nestled in a valley in southwest Wisconsin. Here is a quick synopsis:

- Camping with other members in the meadow
- Chatting with Richard, the owner, around the campfire
- Watching the fog lift off the valley in the morning
- Potlucking with even more members, meeting bloggers Heather and Lee
- Picking strawberries in the rain and eating lots of them!
- Getting a wagon tour of the fields
- Eating Sugar Snap Peas we picked from the fields
- Talking with one of the “professional” growers and hearing his passion for organic produce and this farm