Adventures in CSA, year 2: this has all happened before and it will happen again

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After my angst over potentially switching from the program offered through work to the week-by-week CSA offered by my local farm, we’re now officially beginning week 1 of my 2012 Adventures in CSA. This particular box came from our local farm, at a cost of $22; purchasing in advance for the entire season gets the per-box cost down to $20. The suggests that someone out there thought that around $20/box is a good price that people will consider reasonable for a week’s worth of vegetables. Of course, your mileage may vary on the number of people to be fed by a box; both programs advertise the box as being enough vegetables for 1-2 adults for a week. Hmm. I’d tend to think that 2 adults could whip through those veggies in far less than a week. What primarily holds us back is that the kids won’t eat everything out of the box.

Ah, but this is neither here nor there. Let me start out by presenting you with the contents of the box:

  • Strawberries
  • Sugar snap peas
  • Snow peas
  • Zucchini
  • Spring onions
  • Red russian kale
  • Red mustard greens
  • Carrots

 

2012 Week 1 CSA

Our first veggie box from the farm in town

 

The first thing I noticed about this box when the cashier handed it over was that it was startlingly light. I’m used to the later summer and fall boxes, which are weighed down with apples and potatoes. As I told dh when I met him at home with the box: “There’s NO WAY this box will come out to $22 in value.” We will have to see. The quantities are also a bit odd; we got only 1/2lb of carrots (just about three small carrots) and light bunches of other things. I’ll post about the value of this box after I have all of the prices together, probably tomorrow.

One important distinction between the two box programs is that the one from our local farm is 90% fulfilled by produce from that very same farm, whereas the other box program (the one through work) is fulfilled by somewhere between 10-20 farms that are all within an extremely close radius of each other. The latter is bound to have more variety than what you’d be able to get from a single farm…but that shouldn’t (and likely won’t) be a deterrent to getting that particular program.

I consider us extremely lucky to live in an area where we can get into not one but TWO different CSAs within our town. It’s extremely unlikely I’d ever do the other CSA in town; that one requires that you help plant and harvest, and I’m willing to bake into the cost of the CSA my never having to pick strawberries ever ever EVER again. (Ow – my back.) So, if you have access toany CSA, it may not be the utopian CSA, but if it has fresh fruit and/or veg and it’s local, then you’re already doing something really wonderful for a local farm and your local economy.

Fear not; I haven’t turned into a complete loca-bore. I like to eat oranges all year round, and since I don’t live in Florida or California, you better believe those suckers are shipped in from out of the region. Still, there’s something really wonderful about telling your kids that you have a veggie box in the car and then hearing them explode with joy, clapping and cheering. That’s pretty priceless, to me.

I’m planning on having an affair…

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…with my CSA.

(wait – whut? get your mind out of the gutter)

Now that we’ve gotten into the habit of WANTING fresh fruit and veg in the house in greater quantity than just a bag of stuff here and there, we were itching to see when the next veggie box program would kick off at work. Thankfully, it starts soon – but we may not make it that long.

As it happens, our local farm (which has the farmstand we visit frequently) has its own CSA. They’ve set up their share program as either a “full season” or “one at a time” box, so you can either pay in advance for all of the boxes, or you can call them up a few days before one of the two scheduled pick-up days and decide that you want the box that’s offered that week. The price difference is only $2 a box.

Pluses: VERY local farm (more local than what’s at work, since I work ~30mi from home, and the farm is less than 3mi from my house), and no schlepping a 15-20lb box from my office to my car (a distance of 1/4-1/2mi). Minuses: we won’t get the same variety as from the CSA we got last year (which culls fruit and veg from over 10 local farms), and I feel like I’m cheating on the other CSA.

Seriously? Cheating on a CSA?

Yeah, that’s me – feeling like a jerk because I’m trying another CSA. It’s very much like how I feel when I eat at the (relatively new) Szechuan restaurant in town. The Mandarin place we’ve been going to for the last decade is really quite good, but I grew up eating the spicier Szechuan style, so I eat there on random occasions when I want my Kung Pao Chicken with some oomph.

And I feel like I’m cheating then, too.

Honestly, what is WRONG with me? I’m patronizing local businesses, I’m spreading around what little wealth I have…why should I feel like I’m going behind one business owner’s back by going to a competitor? It’s not like I’m married to them or anything.

But still, I have these nagging feelings of guilt. Then again, with the CSA, it’s a little easier to justify. That schlep from office building to car really isn’t fun when you’re carrying a heavy box. It really would be nice to get that down to more like 50 feet.

So, I suppose it’s all well and good to nurse my guilt with kale chips or some other tasty produce…but I’ll have to keep you posted. The first pickup of the pay-as-you-go boxes from the local farm is this afternoon and I don’t intend to be late. Assume that this year’s Adventures in CSA will be a little different, since I may be switching up my farms. ‘Scuse me while I go drown my guilt in some fresh goodies…OMNOMNOM

Wading in the deep end of the pool

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I’m really incredibly glad that dd appears to be enjoying much of her time at camp. She’s a bit thrown off by the differences between camp and day care (like the fact that they nap on mats instead of on cots), but otherwise she’s been okay. Probably the most unintentionally amusing part of camp is how she’s been coming home in her spare outfit. When I queried her about it this afternoon (“Did your clothes get wet or dirty?”), she just shrugged and moved on. Turns out that she thought having “a change of clothes” meant that she was expected TO change her clothes. So, like the diva-in-training she can sometimes be, she was going through her second wardrobe change of the day (her first being into her swimwear). HIGHLY AMUSING, but since it’s draining her supply of underwear and shorts, we’re asking her to cut it out unless she needs to swap out some clothing.

Where things are less amusing is in the area of time. With a single day care drop-off for the two kids, it was easy enough to drop them off at 7-ish in the morning and pick them up at 5-ish in the evening and hear only mild amounts of complaining. I’ve tried explaining that both dh and I work, and this makes it impossible for us to do late drop-off and early pick-up on a daily basis, but trying to explain this to a 2yo and 5yo is like trying to have a conversation about it with our fish: blank stares if you’re lucky and off to the next interesting thing if you’re not.

Now, we have two drop-offs and two pick-ups. Thankfully, the camp is only a few minutes away from day care, but since camp hours are shorter than day care’s, I’ve been dropping dd off before ds and dh has been picking dd up before picking up ds. This has the dual effect of putting dd into camp when most of the other kids aren’t there (we had to pay extra for before and after care, since regular camp hours are 9:00am-4:00pm, and before/after expands that to 7:00am-6:00pm) and requiring her to go into her former day care to pick up her brother. To hear dh tell it, she’s not responding well to picking up her brother; she’s done with day care and wants to move on. I get that – I really do – but since much of a parent’s life is about controlling and managing the logistics of day-to-day life, as much as I sympathize with her discomfort, I can only tell her to get over it.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t feel awful having either kiddo hanging out there waiting on us to come and get them.

I have some vague memories of being like that when I was younger, too. By the time my mom showed up to pick me up from my babysitter’s house, all I wanted to do was go home. And I was awful. I’d hang on her. I’d pull on her skirt. I’d bug the ever-living crap out of her when all she wanted to do was have a pleasant, adult conversation with my babysitter – her friend (and a woman I truly do consider my second mom). It’s not until you’re a mom and your own children are pulling this same crap on you that you realize how much you have to answer for.

And it’s funny, because I could do something about this. I could work fewer hours and take the commensurate pay and benefits cuts. Or so could dh. But neither of us is interested in entertaining this right now. It wouldn’t buy us enough to do it, and the loss in total compensation could be more problematic than it’s worth. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel guilty.

And, to top it all off, dinner has been late both nights this week – the shift in schedule for pick-ups from camp and day care has really messed with our timing. So the kids are exhausted AND out-of-sorts AND hungry-cranky AND AND AND…

I won’t say I’m a bad mom. A bad mom wouldn’t care. It’s just frustrating that there are so few ways to be better at it without making life even more difficult. So I need to figure out how to let go of my stress at coming to work for 8:30am instead of 8:00am. And I need to find a way to make dinners in 20 minutes total instead of 30 minutes total. And I need to just let some stuff go and stop worrying about every little thing. But the nagging little guilt will still be there. There’s a part of me that thinks it’s always there, for every parent, whether they work in or out of the home, whether they send or don’t send their kiddo(s) to camp or day care…it’s just the constant bug in your ear that tells you that you need to be doing a better job. And I’m glad I still care. Now I just need to figure out how to do what I would consider “a better job” and that should help me get some of that stress right out. I hope.

*glub glub*