Eat your veggies!

A few months ago I did a post on our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm, which is one of the best things we have discovered in our little town of Leuven. CSA's are definitely not a uniquely Belgian phenomenon - the concept originally started in Germany, and the US is now the frontrunner with the most farms. The idea is that members buy into the farm at the beginning of the year, and then share all produce throughout the year. We're not sure how many of these exist in Belgium, but we've been told not very many, so we're very lucky to be only 10 minutes by bike from one of them.

The productivity of the farm has been hugely impressive. We've been getting fresh salad greens since March, and at this time of the year we can barely keep up. Here's this week's haul (our farm is pick-your-own, many others deliver boxes every week):
- two different types of lettuce
- kohlrabi
- cabbage
- swiss chard
- radishes
- zucchini
- broccoli
- spinach
- dill

There are also sugar snap peas, but we still have some left over from last week, and new beans which we didn't have time to pick. And some late strawberries, although we've had our fill already. Oh, and the cherries we picked never made it home... Next week the new potatoes will be harvested already!

There are also chickens on the farm so we can buy fresh eggs, and last week we found out that the sheep that are grazing under the cherry trees, who we first met as little lambs in March, will be part of the offerings in the fall. Tom (our farmer) wants to keep a "pick your own" theme for that as well, though we're not quite sure how that's going to work yet.