Support your local farmer

There are a few things I've realized I love lately... One is gardening. Another is cooking.

Since moving into our house, I've planted a garden in our back yard each year. There was a sizeable plot in the back yard which I planted a lot of my first summer here. I realized quickly that I couldn't keep up with that much garden so have scaled it back to an area about 10 ft x 13 ft. Even that might be a bit ambitious.  Each year I get a little bit better at growing veggies for my family and each year I learn something new about gardening.  I grow tomatoes from seed starting in early March, and this year also grew some cucumbers and broccoli. Lesson learned: sprouting broccoli does not grow big florets. This is also year two of cucumbers and I'm not sure I'll bother again. I bought 5 seeds from a local seed saver and 4 of them failed, I think due to some slimy bacterial infection in the xylem of the plant. (God bless the internet for the reason, if not a solution.) On the plus side, I'm growing 6 varieties of tomatoes this year and for the first time ever I've already got some green tomatoes growing on the vine. In my last two years, I didn't even have flowers until mid August!!! One of the varieties is even from seeds I saved myself! We'll see how productive the plants are...

Anyway, the real reason for this post is to tell you about a new venture I'm trying this year.  My friend and I have signed up for a CSA (Community Shared Agriculture) crop share with John at Eagle Creek Farms, near Bowden, AB.  The way it works is that we pay in advance for the crops that John plants on his land, and we get 14 weeks of food delivered to my local community association parking lot. It's a cool idea and becoming more common with people who want to support local farm economy. Read about it on his website: http://www.eaglecreekfarms.ca/csa.htm

Somehow, knowing exactly where my food is coming from this year has inspired me to blog about what I make with the produce I'll be getting and growing. There are some things I've never really cooked with before so it will mean lots of experimenting, which I love.  So I'll be blogging about meals I make  under "Farmer John" headings. I'll be telling John about this at next week's delivery so that he can (if he wants) let other people in the CSA know. I'll also tweet photos of dishes.

Happy eating!