Next Stop on Our Local Tour: CSA

For the next five months, I'm going to play vegetable roulette and share the proceeds with my family (and you, of course). I'm up for the challenge of cooking whatever's in a weekly bag from Potomac Vegetable Farms in Vienna.

This is my first experience with community-supported agriculture, in which patrons pay an annual subscription fee upfront to cover farm production costs in return for a share of the harvest. CSAs help keep local farms viable; plenty of them serve the Washington area. Sign-up usually takes place at the beginning of the year.

I chose one with a pickup point just a few miles from home. Potomac Vegetable Farms sold out its season's nearly 600 shares in a single day back in February, according to co-owner Hana Newcomb. I bought a regular summer and fall share for $640. That's enough to feed two adults and works out to about $27 per week. I won't know whether our CSA membership will save us money until I see how well the bags meet our vegetable needs; what I do know is that anything that saves me trips to the store will be cost-effective.

The appeal of CSAs has its roots in the growing desire for fresh, local foods, but the secret-ingredient aspect of the weekly share is not to be overlooked. "A lot of people don't want me to tell them what's in the bags in advance," says Allan Balliett, who runs the Fresh and Local CSA out of his farm in Shepherdstown, W.Va. "They like the surprise."

Whether that surprise will offset any downside to CSA membership is hard to predict. I've heard of people who immediately hand off vegetables to their neighbors when they don't like what they get. At Potomac Vegetable Farms, if you fail to pick up your bag for three consecutive weeks, they will stop packing it until you ask for one again.

CSAs historically have a high turnover rate among members. Bull Run Mountain Vegetable Farm in the Plains has an average annual retention rate of about 40 percent, which co-owner Leigh Hauter says is good. Some members of the farm's CSA have kept coming back for more than 10 of its 14 years.

Every CSA farmer I spoke with said diversity of offerings is a must for retaining members. Hana Newcomb, co-owner of my CSA, has a simple explanation for member burnout: "It's a little relentless. Every week there's another bag."

Hauter has found that CSAs work best for those who really love food: "You've got to be the kind of person who cares about cooking and can cook from what's available."

My family is not necessarily looking to increase our consumption of vegetables; my husband and I already eat a fair amount of them, and my sons are still in the nibbling-and-rejecting stage. We are eager to break out of our vegetable rut, however.

I joined because we have become increasingly happy and involved "locavores." Every week since the fall, we've received deliveries from South Mountain Creamery in Middletown; we love getting locally produced cheese, eggs and milk in glass bottles.

Then we ordered specific cuts from one-quarter of a cow (a "split" side, packaged at 105 pounds) from Roseda Beef in Monkton, Md.; now we're eating meat raised locally, humanely and without added hormones, all from a producer only 90 minutes away.

The CSA seemed like a logical next step. I found friends in it, too, while scrolling through the list of members who share my pickup day. Winifred Conkling and Jonathan Rak, who live in Vienna, also joined for the first time this year. Like me, they are looking forward to their mystery allotment.

"In the summer, we tend to rely on frozen vegetables and convenience foods because we're always on the run," Rak says. "We're excited about getting that bag and maybe trying something new."

Conkling and Rak are keen to prepare more-healthful meals because their 8-year-old daughter is diabetic and gluten-intolerant. Instead of cooking separately for her, the couple have put the whole family on a low-sugar, wheat-free regimen.

But joining "is also about going local," Conkling says. "One of the fields is almost in our back yard, so it feels right to us."

Last week I made my final big farmers market foray for a while. Inspired, I brought home baby bok choy, radishes, spring onions, tender young squash and armloads of herbs, sidestepping the greens and turnips that Newcomb said I could expect in my first bag.

The herbs spiffed up summer squash that was roasted; the radishes earned a quick braise in sweet butter. And the small Chinese cabbages were pan-steamed with spoonfuls of sesame oil and soy sauce.

Will the CSA bags have the same effect on me? This week, as I begin to chronicle my membership, my own "Iron Chef" cooking games will begin.

Stephanie Witt Sedgwick, a former Food section recipe editor, can be reached at food@washpost.com.Her column appears the first Wednesday of every month. Next month's column will compare how CSAs gather and distribute their produce.