Belmont Farms CSA and our first CSA haul

Here's a picture of part of our haul today!

This afternoon, Ben and I picked up our first winter share of veggies from Belmont CSA! CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and the concept for CSA shares is that in return for investing in a local farm through the purchase of a share, you get a portion of that farm's bounty throughout the growing season. Belmont CSA's winter share is a growing collective among three farms, and the Belmont CSA acts like the agent for the other two farms. There are lots of good reasons for supporting local farms and sustainable agriculture -- we'll probably post about that later on.

At the Belmont farm, we had a great time walking through the field - they are still growing lettuces, leafy greens like kale and collard greens, leeks, broccoli, cauliflower, and root crops like radishes.

Here's some pics of the farm.






It's amazing that you can still grow food in the Boston area in late October, when evening temperatures oftentimes dip into the late 30s. We sipped on apple cider and pondered which variety of apple to take home. Included in this pick-up was 10 lbs. of apples, and we chose Empire apples. We also picked up a pumpkin from Sergi Farms next door to the Belmont CSA -- Ben's going to carve the Obama campaign symbol into it. We'll post pictures once the pumpkin is carved!

Our bounty from the CSA is below. (We put everything on our kitchen floor to get everything in one frame!) Besides 10 lbs. of apples, included in our share today was 45 lbs. of produce -- swiss chard, escarole, lettuces, green and red peppers, napa cabbage, leeks, harukei turnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, beets, parsley, acorn squash, delicata squash, butternut, sugar pumpkin, spinach, carrots, daikon and fennel! We are storing the squash, onions, sweet potatoes and potatoes in our back stairwell and hope they won't go bad hanging out back there.