This will be our 5th year as a drop off spot for Shooting Star Farms CSA. For the last 4 years I’ve been lucky to be the one working when they drop off all the produce boxes in our waiting room. They generally come while I’m busy treating patients. I know they are because, when I go into the office, I’m hit with the musty earthy smell of organic produce fresh from the dirt, wafting down the stairs from the waiting room.

Like many of the OAP staff, I’m also a member of Shooting Star, so I get to take home a box at the end of my shift. I’m looking forward to how the season usually starts out with bright beautiful strawberries lighting up an already colorful box. These strawberries often don’t make it home since I eat most of them in between the time the boxes arrive and I finish work.

Any produce that does make it home gets divided between what should go into the fridge and what can hang out for a little bit. Anything that doesn’t require prompt refrigeration gets artistically stacked on the kitchen table as if I were going to do a still life. It’s easy to do. Their produce is very pretty. Just check out their website. I generally get home late, after my kids have gone to sleep. I set everything out so that when they wake up in the morning it’s like a mini-vegi-christmas on the kitchen table. We name and discuss all the vegetables. My daughter is very vocal about what she doesn’t like and won’t eat. Occasionally, if she is being particularly picky, I’ll lay on the guilt and say, “Matt and Lily worked REALLY hard to grow all this food for us.” So it’s nice to have a name and a face to who is harvesting our bounty.  

I also look forward to the popcorn corn we get in the summer time. The kids love to help break off all the kernels off the cob and listen to the pan come alive with the pops. We butter it up and watch a good G rated movie. I often save the popcorn to use later in the year, rationing it out so that it’ll last until the winter.

The end of the season is bitter sweet. The last drop off is usually the week of Thanksgiving so the whole box gets piled into the car with us as we head south to visit family. It’s become the tradition, over the last 4 years, that I cook up the vegi dish and squash dish for Thanksgiving dinner. That final box provides it all and ends up in the bellies of all my loved ones.