Cure Organic Farm
Farm Fresh Vegetables
We recently renewed our summer CSA membership with Cure Organic Farm and can’t wait to start getting fresh fruit and vegetables again. Every Wednesday during the summer I get excited to go to the farm. I love the feeling of being outside on a nice summer evening, the sound of the stream trickling along, and excitement over finding out what we will get for the week. Then we head home and actually enjoy prepping everything for easy use.
Joining the CSA has been rewarding in many ways. It has forced us to become better cooks and eat vegetables we had never even heard of before. Sauteed brussel sprouts have become one of our new favorites, and we learned to cook everything from turnips to rutabagas. At first, I found planning meals around the week’s vegetables challenging, but adjusted. Now that it is winter, and we are no longer receiving produce, I am having a hard time narrowing down our options for dinner. During the summer, Cure provided us with recipes and information about how to cook the vegetables we’d received. Their newsletters are fun to read even if you aren’t a member and are one of the things that convinced me to join.
Our farm has also been a great source of information about local food. They grow most of the vegetables themselves, but last year gave us corn from a neighboring farm and fruit from various farms in the Palisade region of Colorado. There, farmers grow cherry, peach, apricot, apple and pear trees. Cure also offers their members coffee shares from a local grinder, chickens from Wisdom poultry, and local turkeys at Thanksgiving. Because of them, we’ve realized that eating local is possible, you just have to know where to find the food.
Cure is sold out of their vegetable shares this summer but still has fruit and coffee shares available. If you live in the Boulder area, they have a farm stand where you can buy vegetables in the summer (located at 75th and Valmont). They also attend the Boulder’s Farmer Market every Wednesday and Saturday. Cure has a list of other farms on their website which may still have vegetable shares available.
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Eating Local. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
February 19th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Once again, I’m totally jealous. I think it is so cool that you guys are writing about this – it definitely inspires me to think differently about being more green – as I have a lot of opportunity. Eating locally is honestly something I haven’t given much thought to – and I’m realizing that it is just one more way to think “greener.”
February 19th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Hey Bione, You should read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It is such a good book, it is a memoir so it reads kind of like a novel but is also very instructional. I hadn’t ever thought about eating local before reading it. I really feel like it along with some other books of changed my life and for the better, I really feel so much better when i am eating healthy! Glad you are liking the blog!
February 20th, 2009 at 6:50 am
That’s cool that you guys are getting winter veggies. I am also trying to expand my cooking repertoire. I’m also jealous that your CSA has so many options. I’m sure there’s something like that around here, I just haven’t found it yet. I have been buying lots of local sweet potatoes lately and just bake them for an hour and eat them like regular baked potatoes. They are pretty delish and really good for you. I never knew how awesome root veggies were. I’m sure Jakey is liking his sweet potato fix, have you expanded his food intake?
February 20th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Had I stayed in Oklahoma I’d have joined the Oklahoma Food cooperative- now that I’ve looked at CSA options but it’s so overwhelming how many choices there are here. Due to the shorter growing season here most of them have a shorter delivery period than CSA in other parts of the country. Some have pick up at the farm, some have pick up points in the city, and some offer delivery. Also, there are some that have options to get a larger number of root vegetables at the end of the season, but other than that there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount to distinguish them.
Do you have any recommendations for things to look for when considering different farms?
February 20th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Amy – yes we have been eating sweet potatoes that way too, delicious. Jake has had a few more foods but i had frozen so many carrots, potatoes, and winter squash that that has been most of what he is eating! He is getting a little better at eating food, but now he LOVES drinking water, i’ll have to post a video, it is hilarious he gets so excited.
Michael – My recommendations on the CSA are that you find one where you can pick it up close to you. We are really close to the farm so it makes sense for us to pick it up there but they had other options as well. If it isn’t convenient you might not go sometimes. Also, ours only offers a window of 4-7 on Wed nights so definitely check the times and find one that will work for you. Our CSA offers three sizes as well, one for just 1 person, one for 2-3 and one for 4-5. We get the medium one, which is about right for us, we aren’t overwhelmed, but we do eat more vegetables than normal. A lot of people I know who have done it get more than they use and then end up not doing it again because they feel like they are wasting money not eating what they get. So I would find one that is the right size or find other people who want to split with you. Jeremy do you have any other suggestions?
April 3rd, 2009 at 7:43 pm
I just signed up for a farm share for the first time. I’m really looking forward to it. June seems like a long way off though!