In the, er, glory days of high school, my friends and I eschewed the cafeteria in favor of a stretch of linoleum outside the math department, where we’d sit with our backs against the lockers and eat lunch. It was a quiet place to talk and people-watch, a pursuit that was especially rewarding on the days that my junior-year math teacher made an appearance. He’d saunter out of the math department toward the water fountain, where he’d wash produce for his lunch. And by “produce,” we’re not talking about a baggie of baby carrots; more like entire heads of lettuce. Or whole cucumbers. Or a bunch of radishes, if he was feeling especially whimsical. (To put this all into context, I should add that he was a regular wearer of Hawaiian shirts, and a ukulele player who used a Kermit the Frog puppet as the singing dummy to his ventriloquist.)

Last Thursday, I felt a flashback to those math-teacher moments of old, as I myself stood at the sink washing a entire bagful of vegetables. But I had a good excuse! I’d just picked up the bounty that was my first CSA share.

Signing up for a CSA program (community-supported agriculture) means you receive weekly deliveries of produce from a local farm based on whatever’s blooming, and this marks my first year as a subscriber. (What can I say? Local produce tastes good, and now there’s no way to avoid eating my greens. Plus, I like a good kitchen challenge.) Graceland Farm’s summer program began last Thursday, and it’s been a vegetable-infused whirlwind! I thought I’d let you in, dear readers, on some of the fun—and, okay, the utter craziness—of it all.

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