Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Piedmont Biofarm - Post 3

In the past, I have posted about our local farmers market and the benefits of buying local. This year, we decided to take our love of local farmers to a new level, by joining a CSA- Community Supported Agriculture. All this means, is that you pay a farmer for a certain share of their crops for a specified time period. 

During the summer we joined a CSA from one farm and when that was over, we joined the fall CSA through Piedmont Biofarm in Pittsboro, NC. We decided to go with this farm as we had built a relationships with the farmers each week at the Durham farmers market and liked the practices that they used for farming.  I had the pleasure of recently visiting the farm and seeing the sustainable farming practices they use like solar panels and bio fuel. I was impressed by their use of land and the knowledge that they had about the produce that they grow. While not certified organic, they use organic methods to harvest crops. In addition to the wonderful practices, their produce is top notch.

This is a picture of the summer CSA. I keep forgetting to take one from the fall one!
We have been delighted with the bounties that we received from both CSAs. Now that we are in the fall CSA, I would like to dedicate some of my postings to using ingredients found in our Piedmont Biofarm CSA share. We have come across some ingredients that we have not seen before and others that we do not normally cook with. This is a good opportunity to expand our palates. It is also a good time to reinvent the way that we use some vegetables.   

I expect that you will see posts relating to sweet potato greens, beets, green beans, and eggplant to name a few.

4 comments:

KitteeBee said...

I am so scared of joining a CSA. It would really put me to the test, because I am very good at letting produce spoil. :-(


xo
kittee

x said...

I love the idea of a CSA! We don't have the same thing here but we did sign up for an organic veggie box each week and all of the produce comes from the areas we live in which is amazing because there is such variety and like you I get ingredients that I would never buy!

Ingrid said...

I love supporting local growers and CSA boxes! What a great experience, to visit the farms in person!

GiGi said...

I am so blessed to be living in Northern Ca. There is produce market with the best of organic local farms a hop skip and jump from me. Can walk away with two bags full of produce for about 12 bucks. I can't wait to see your fall produce posts.