What’s fresh right now?
Forget your five fruits and vegetables a day. Sometimes, weeks will go by where the only fruits and vegetables I see are the ones on top of my pizza (unless they’ve started stuffing vegetables into my ramen packets). Every year, spring comes around, things start greening up, and I start thinking about eating more fresh fruits and vegetables.
You folks over in Seattle are pretty lucky to have Pike Place’s perpetual farmer’s market, and truth to tell, I could have that too, if I wanted: Pike Place has a Community Supported Agriculture program which delivers all over the place. And they aren’t the only ones.
Farmers have a pretty hard life, I reckon — out in the elements all year long, but somehow a lot of the farms in our immediate vicinity have managed to come up with time to make websites advertising their bounty. CSA lists are available from King County, LocalHarvest, and of course, Seattle Tilth Association.
Everyone does it all a little differently, but here are my top four picks for those of us stuck on the Eastside.
Pike Place has a May 1 deadline. They have a separate Flower share. And with all the various people involved with the market, they’ll probably have the most variety. They toss in honey and vinegar every once in a while — you can’t beat that. You can pick up at the market, or at a distribution center near you. If you’re downtown, they even have a special Downtowner Basket — rightsized for urban households. Aww, cute.
Dog Mountain Farm tempts me with its offers of flowers, honey, jams, goat cheese, starter plants, and an egg share. Mmmm…. fresh eggs. And they have a spring, summer, and winter season. Keep watching them: they JUST paired up with Thundering Hooves over in Walla Walla, so they can offer meat pretty soon! You can pick up at the farm, or they seem to be able to deliver.
Jubilee Farm are similarly evil: in addition to fruits and vegetables, they are prone to throwing in a loaf of bread(!!!!) and eggs (probably for a little extra charge). And they offer bananas! (Bananas happen to be one of my staple fruits. If I forget about them and they go black, I can still use them in banana bread.) Jubilee has several different seasonal CSAs — right now they are just about to start their Late Spring season — hurry! Best of all, they have some six-week commitment seasons, which is one of the shortest ones (other farms will rope you in for 20). They even try and be a little flexible, and if you need to miss a week, you can usually sweet-talk them into letting you go over into the next season. The only trouble is that during the summer, you need to go pick up at the farm (during the other seasons, they have other distribution centers). Remember what I said about farmers having a hard life?
Lastly, I have Full Circle Farm. I know Full Circle Farm isn’t much to look at when you compare it with the others — no egg shares, no little perks, but what it does have is *flexibility* (say it with me). You can sign up for a weekly basket of goodies, or a twice-monthly basket. They’ll let you skip a week if you need to, and just tack one on at the end. They email you at the end of the week to let you know what’s coming to your door, and then let you go online to make substitutions! When I saw that, I almost died and went to heaven RIGHT THEN.
So in the aftermath of yet another Earth Day, make a pledge to support your local farmer, and buy a share in a farm today.
Farm share not for you? King County and LocalHarvest will also give you a line on your nearest farmers market.
Then King County goes one better with its Puget Sound Area Farm and Crop Finder. Need to find a place to pick strawberries in June? They can direct you right here.