What do you do on Wednesdays? 

We hang around and hand out vegetables.

Van Weldon from Wood Duck Farm started a CSA last year.  The farm is in Cleveland—about fifty miles north of town.   This is a little far to pick up some groceries so Joe, Van’s driver, delivers the weekly shares to various points around town.  Last year my local pickup point was in an office building, but this year so many people signed up that Van needed to find a larger space.

Like my garage.  In this picture on the left we have the full shares, on the right the partial, smaller, shares.  In the center we keep the signout sheet, and the cooler contains treats like cool salad greens.  Carmen and David are usually around, somewhere.  Carmen likes to make sure everybody puts a check by their name and remember their salad greens.  (If someone forgets to sign out, she tattles to me.)

The first week David was so excited to have so much company that he made a kid-sized centerpiece with his favorite shells and some flowers from the front yard.

It takes about three hours for everyone to pick up their shares, so C&D usually pass the time by drawing or painting on the driveway.

One day David drew some rockets, which inspired a customer to stop and draw some artwork of his own.

Another day David drew a picture of Sarah Hazel, who had come by for a visit.  In the picture Sarah is holding his hand.

After everyone picks up their shares we get to enjoy what we’ve been given that week.  With the contents of our shares we might cook (here, Carmen is cooking rosemary portabello mushrooms from a share in May, then eating them all up with David):

play with our food (as an example, this is David playing telephone with a cucumber from David Cater of Utility Research Garden; David is another producer who is gracious to deliver to us on Saturday):

slice and dehydrate (shown, yellow squash chips):

or just gobble it all up (like last week’s gigantic and sweet cantaloupe).    The summer CSA just has a couple of weeks left, then we all will rest during the hottest, hardest part of the summer.  The fall CSA should begin in late September; see you then.