CSA

We had our first sweet corn of the season last night, and it was as wonderfully fresh and sweet and textured as ever. The corn has been available in farmers’ parking lot stands and the co-op and grocery stores for several weeks now, but we’ve not bought any because this year we have a share in a CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture), Grinnell Heritage Farm, and for the past ten weeks have been picking up, first bags, then boxes of fresh-harvested produce at our farmer’s market. We assumed that corn would be showing up in our box soon. But when I saw this Wednesday in the CSA newsletter our share for the week — green beans, summer savory, cabbage, winterbor kale, summer squash, green top carrots, garlic, green onions, cucumbers, and two kinds of tomatoes — I decided to go ahead and buy some sweet corn at the co-op.

When I walked into the store, Steve, the produce manager, asked what I was looking for, and I said corn. He took me over to the bin with farmer Marvin’s corn and I related to him (or rather reminded him, as I’d talked with him about it before) that we had a share in a CSA and hadn’t had any corn yet. He said that Grinnell Heritage Farm was organic (he buys a lot of organic produce from them) and that you just can’t grow corn organically — too many buggy and slimy pests. That was reassuring to hear, both that Steve got produce from Grinnell Heritage Farm and that the reason for their not growing sweet corn was organic.

We’ve been pleased with our CSA share. We’ve had a bit (only a bit) of spent produce we’ve had to throw onto the compost pile, but we’ve thankfully been able to consume or freeze in various forms at least 95% of our share (that’s for two people). And it’s also meant we’ve been eating much more produce, in a variety of ways, as we should. But most positively, we’ve had to devise new and different menus each week, sometimes using vegetables unknown to us before now. It’s sometimes challenging, always rewarding.

But we will still be supplementing our CSA share with local sweet corn for the rest of the season. Organic or not, it still defines summer in Iowa.