PROSPECT-LEFFERTS GARDENS — With growing season just around the corner, your local CSA is taking applications for the summer.
Now through March 30, the Prospect-Lefferts Gardens CSA (“community-supported agriculture,” for those unfamiliar) is signing up households who want to buy a share of a season’s crop from a local farmer.
Every Saturday for 22 weeks between May and October, participating families will get a load of whatever fresh veggies are harvested that week from a farm in Hudson, N.Y. — with the option to buy into a fruit or egg share, as well, said Karen Oh, who’s helped organize the CSA since it opened in 2007.
“It’s definitely a different way of eating,” she said. “Instead of going to the store and saying ‘I’m going to get this, this and this,’ it’s sort of like ‘Oh, we have to eat kale today’ or ‘Oh, we have to eat the zucchini today.’”
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But having the menu pre-selected, she said, can be “really nice.”
“You don’t have to think about it too hard, you know? You say, ‘Here’s my ingredients. Here’s what I’ve got. What can we do for dinner?’”
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A single share of vegetables costs $340 for the season, which works out to $15.45 a week, she said. Fruit shares from Samascott Orchard in Kinderhook, N.Y. cost $135 (that’s $6.14 per week) and a dozen eggs every week from Sunset Farm in Argyle, N.Y. costs $99 for the season, or $4.50 a week. Double shares are available, as well.
In addition to buying into the CSA at the beginning of the summer, every member must work two two-hour shifts a season to help facilitate share pick-ups, which happen every Saturday morning at the Maple Street School on Lincoln Road between Ocean and Flatbush avenues.
Last year, the CSA had over 200 households participating, Oh said, with memberships going up between 20 to 25 percent every year.
“They’re giving us your staples you need to cook a meal. You’ll get lettuce, carrots, corn … snap peas,” she said, adding that during the season, she rarely visits the store to feed her family of three.
“I’m amazed at how well we can eat for what we’re paying for it,” she said.
To sign up for the PLG CSA summer 2015 season or to find out more about how it works, visit their website.
