Friday, August 2, 2013

Community Supported Agriculture & Ice Cream Pail Pickles


Yesterday was Thursday.
This week's basket!

Farm Day...

Last winter, we decided to participate in Community Supported Agriculture.  For the first time in our area, a local family farm decided to venture into offering "shares".  Starting small, ten full  and ten half shares were available and we purchased (in advance) a half share.  

Our half share gives us about 18 weeks of fresh farm produce, picked up weekly from the farm.  The variety has been wonderful.  So far we've had multiple kinds of lettuce, spinach, kale, Swiss chard, beets, carrots, potatoes, yellow and green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, plus eggs and even fresh flowers.  

There are risks!  If we have hail, for example, "our" crop will suffer and the baskets won't be quite as full.  But so far (knock on wood), the weather has been great!

An interesting aspect of a farm share is how the harvest evolves over the season.  We had tons of spinach and lettuce at the beginning, but now it's WAY too hot for spinach and we've moved on to beans, carrots and cucumbers. We look forward to seeing what this week's basket holds and it has become a challenge to see what we can do with all those veggies.

This week's basket included cucumbers and the suggestion to try Ice Cream Pail Pickles.  Okay!!  The recipe provided is easy and quick.  (Note: I only made a quarter of the full recipe listed below.)

Ice Cream Pail Pickles
Ice Cream Pail Pickles

1 cup vinegar
2 cups white sugar
1/4 cup salt (pickling or regular)
1 teaspoon celery salt
1 teaspoon mustard seed

Mix in an ice cream pail.
Do not cook!

8 cups thinly sliced cucumbers
1 cup thinly sliced onion

Add to bowl.  Stir and cover.
Store in fridge for a few hours before eating.

Enjoy!

1 comment:

  1. I am glad all the flooding didn't destroy the garden! My sister who lives in lower Michigan also has a share in a local farm and absolutely loves it! Southern California doesn't have anything like that. Darn!

    ReplyDelete