So you’ve joined a CSA, how do I prepare my meals now?

Youve just tipped out your Waterland CSA share on the kitchen table…Ready, steady, cook!

Perhaps the way you’ve prepared your meals up til now has been turned on its head as you’ve just joined the CSA and are getting bags of sometimes surprising but always fresh vegetables turning up every week. How to avoid the “bag of mystery green stuff left in the back of fridge to go brown” thing?

So before the CSA, life was great. It was easy. You followed a recipe blog or insta influencer, looked in the back of the newspaper, or poured through your latest recipe book to get inspiration each week. Then you’d skip to the shops and happily pick up all the bits in the ingredients list and bring em home, ok great. Painting by numbers, exciting and delicious food on the table, job well done. Trouble was, the ingredients in the list weren’t always at their best in the shops if say a Valentines dessert got you searching for strawberries in February or you’ve ended up paying quite alot for say an avocado that looked tantalising on the glossy magazine page spread on toast but was hard as iron in the fruit bowl all month and weird and brown as soon as you opened it. A bit of sold the dream, bought the nightmare. And this is not considering yet the environmental responsibility angle of out of season fresh produce in the UK- a field of many grey areas of course but in general a diet of local and seasonal fresh produce seems to benefit the planet.

Seasonal eating- how out of touch with it are we anyway? I just made a new table of vegetable seasons at Waterland CSA to help folks work out what to expect and when specifically from my shares. All a guideline of course as the climate changes, but a rough idea of when we’ll be harvesting about 50 different types of vegetables grown here. Many supermarket practices although bringing food security do disconnect many from when fresh produce we can grow here in the UK is typically available. The “Farm washing” practices sound especially confusing- as I understand it buying in produce from all over the world and packaging it as if its British produced- weird. As a UK organic vegetable farmer one of the key skills of crop planning and farm management is season extension. How do I make the widest variety of fresh and nutritious vegetables available for the greatest number of people throughout the year? Loads of things actually but 3 main things I think- polytunnels, varieties and storage crops.

Polytunnels are the clear polythene covered metal hooped structures which are fairly easy to construct yourself and the plastic coverings can last 10 years if you look after them and they don’t chuffing blow away. I use 3 polytunnels in a permanent place on the farm to increase temperature of the soil and air inside so I can plant out things like dwarf french beans, cucumbers and tomatoes in there before the last frost date (15 May in Cambridgeshire I have in my head but may need to update that- anyway I am risk averse!) and they can have protection from the elements and a good start to the growing season. I use one polytunnel specifically for plant propagation- so every plant is started as a seed in peat free compost in a warmer environment and can get an earlier planting out in the field and an earlier harvest than otherwise. In the winter months the polytunnels are filled with lush green and purple salad leaves which can grow much better in the protected environment than at outside temperatures, eg mustard greens or tatsoi.

There are many different varieties of each vegetable that I grow, each selected by plant breeders to do something slightly different. For example I grow 4-6 different leek varieties. Even though they are all the same species and do look very similar, the leeks in your CSA shares in September are a completely different variety from the ones harvested for your January shares. You would see yourself in the field the slightly different growth habits and even different green hues, some yellow green autumn King Richards and some blue green Winter Husky. With careful variety choice and sourcing, sowing dates and harvest planning I can hope to get leeks at their freshest and best from September to May from the farm. And its much the same story for other vegetables, even ones such as lettuce which I sow successionally each week, the varieties change to types resistant to bolting in the summer heat and then to those which will steadily grow throughout the colder months so we can have crunchy leaves all year.

Storage of crops through the winter that are harvested in autumn can extend the season when that veg is at its best. I think the funnest example of this at Waterland CSA is the last beetroot succession is lifted in about November, put into nets and buried in a clamp (1m deep hole in the field). Well below the frost line and out of way of wildlife that would eat it, keeps fresh and nice in the moisture of the soil as well. The beet are still alive as they grow little leaves from the crown when they are buried, so lovely and nutritious when dug up in January.

Despite my cunning season extension, I do take a break from harvesting shares in the Hungry Gap. This period varies but I have found to be March and April, when winter crops in the field are running out and the newly sown spring crops of the year are yet to be harvested. To be honest this is the time that I am flat out preparing crops and land to make sure we have things to harvest for the May-Feb season so wouldn’t have time to fit in a share delivery anyway!

So I’m asking you to accept the challenge of mystery lucky dip of vegetables, and for a leap of trust that I will grow enough to satisfy your hunger and curiosity throughout the season with as much know how as I can. Instead of starting by looking in a recipe book, please channel the old daytime TV show Ready Steady Cook and tip out your share bag onto the counter and see what ingenious and delicious things you can come up with. Your recipe blogs etc can be your inspiration and your cookery nouse your guidelines for getting the best out of your bag. I know this takes more brain space sometimes and I thank you for supporting me and taking on this challenge. I will make sure there is a mix of items in shares that need eating soon, eg salads and leafy veg, are medium term storers eg tomatoes and cabbage, and can keep for a longer time eg squash and onions. Of course I do as much as I can to be predictable, and email the share contents, veg ID and recipe inspo the evening before to try and help you out on the practicalities of weekly meal planning but on the day things sometimes change quickly. Everything in the shares is from the Waterland fields so I have no buffer of buying in potatoes etc and doing tatos onions carrots every share. If the crop covers blow off the raddichio in November and the deer move in over night, I will have to change the CSA pick list that morning and curse those animals again! Venison recipe I might post next…

A note on kitchen compost bins- how big is yours? Mine is a tall sided bucket with a plastic barrel lid. I seem to fill it once a week in all seasons. Perhaps this is also key to meal prep on a CSA?