Minneapolis/St. Paul Nesties
Our Happy Family: Hugo, Reese, and Wylie
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
CSA's
Does anyone have a CSA membership to any farms that they use over the summer? Hubby and I are considering buying a full share from a CSA and think it would be awesome to support a local farm plus get fresh produce every week. We live in St. Cloud but I work in Maple Grove...So i'm looking for one somewhere in between if possible.Any advice or recommendations would be appreciated.
TIA.
Our Happy Family: Hugo, Reese, and Wylie
Re: CSA's
Yes yes! We love being CSA members!
Here's a directory of MN/WI CSA Farms, with lots of good info for considerations when selecting your farm: http://www.landstewardshipproject.org/csa.html
Our current CSA is Harmony Valley Farm: http://www.harmonyvalleyfarm.com/index.php
They are a larger operation, but they offer great variety and lots of flexibility. Their customer service is great too.
We were previously members of BC Gardens--they were a much smaller operation, run by two women farmers, which I liked. I also LOVED that they delivered straight to our door (vs. picking up at a pick-up site!). But the selection was less diverse, and there was less flexibility. They decided to take a break from CSAing for awhile, and so we switched to HVF at the recommendation of a friend.
When I have more time (i.e. post-PhD), I might do another round of research and try out another CSA, just to keep exploring what different farms have to offer...
Let me know if you have any more specific questions, and I'd be happy to answer them if I can!
we had Harmony Valley last summer, and it was the single biggest waste of money we've ever spent. They were AWFUL.
Our salads would wilt within 24 hours, we had raspberries come moldy, a watermelon come that had a huge crack and chunk taken out of it, most of our veggies went bad before Sunday dinner rolled around (our pick up was Thursday night). We threw out more than we ate, it was HORRIBLE.
Needless to say, we won't be using them again. In fact, the whole experience has really turned us off of CSA's in general. We're going to just make it a priority to get to the farmer's market every weekend this summer.
Strange... we've been with them for two years and haven't had this problem at all. We've been really impressed with the quality of their produce... Some of it may come down to proper storage of the veggies, and some of it is a matter of just learning which items need to be eaten ASAP and which ones will last the week (or longer). I did a lot of meal-planning prior to the pick-up day based on their "here's what's in the box" emails, so that I was ready to go with the items that I knew wouldn't last as long.
Of course, we also have a bunny who helps us keep up with our greens, and we compost any veggie waste that can't be fed to the bunny, so we never really feel bad about throwing a little veggie waste out.
The farmers market is also a great option though! Sorry to hear that your CSA experience was a bad one
if it were just the things we were unfamiliar with that went bad, I would chalk it up to not knowing how to store it.
But I've eaten and taken care of the standard veggies my entire life. I know how to store a bag of lettuce, potatoes, carrots, etc. Not to mention, much of it came to us already deteriorating.
I have friends that did other CSAs, and they would have the same veggies as us last a week or more.
A lot of my friends did featherstone, as was mentioned above, and all of them really loved it.
That's good to know... I'll keep it on my list of CSAs to consider exploring next year!
I actually really wanted to do featherstone, because my friend is a drop site (and then I knew she'd be flexible about pick up time), but we were splitting with my SIL and her BF, and she wanted HVF.
Thanks everyone for chiming in. I think my sister in law and I are going to buy a share and then split the produce every week to see if we really like it our first year around, that way we can split the cost.
Here are the two we are deciding between:
http://www.localharvest.org/blue-ribbon-farm-M29736
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.1&thid=12dbb0371c850b25&mt=application/pdf&url=https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui%3D2%26ik%3Def500c15d7%26view%3Datt%26th%3D12dbb0371c850b25%26attid%3D0.1%26disp%3Dattd%26realattid%3D85ebd46dd997d16e_0.1%26zw&sig=AHIEtbRvjVIel2_I0D7aqp8hYmYANWfmhASame here - we just signed up for our 4th year, in fact! They keep getting better every year.
http://driftlessorganics.com/