What’s everyone doing for CSA boxes? I like the County Line Harvest ones a lot–especially the family size which gets me and my wife through a week or so, and I love that I can just pick up at eightfold coffee in Echo Park. It feels super safe and has led me to really make my cooking seasonal.
I still think I could use some fruit and/or more diversity of lettuce. Anybody have a farm/box they recommend?
PS–apologies if this shouldn’t be in the restaurant section.
There’s no restaurant section, anything about food in LA belongs here.
Interesting that County Line is in both SF and LA.
We’ve been doing Farm Fresh to You deliveries. They definitely have diversity of lettuce. I haven’t been overly impressed by the fruit.
https://www.farmfreshtoyou.com/
Farm Fresh to You is a huge grocery delivery company. As of two years ago they had 100,000 subscribers and revenues of $80 million. I think they’ve stopped advertising themselves as a CSA like they did ten years ago when their revenues were only $15 million.
I haven’t noticed many CSA boxes focusing on fruit, but one suggestion is the box from Tamai Family Farms. Republique was selling these last year when they were operating as a larder, but I think you can order directly from Tamai now. I’ve never gotten the box, but I’ve purchased from the Tamai stand at the SMFM.
https://my-site-tamaifamilyfarms.square.site/
For diversity of lettuce, I would have suggested County Line, but since you’re already getting those, it seems like Girl & Dug offers quite a bit (have no experience with them myself).
https://www.girlndug.com/collections/petite-boxes
That makes sense. I actually think the most consistently good stuff we get from them is the meat from Buckhorn.
I see FFTY does offer a “traditional CSA” option, but I don’t think any small farm with an actual CSA program would agree with that description.
Yeah, I’ve been tempted by them but have so far tried to stay away. It seems more impactful to support one farm, if possible. Still, I have a number of friends using them, and they are all pretty satisfied.
Tamai might be exactly what I’m looking for. The ability to choose boxes while supporting a small-ish farm seems fantastic. Plus that jam looks very tasty.
Girl & Dug looks wonderful but a bit spendy for my blood. I’ve thought about doing one for fun but don’t want to get hooked!
Girl & Dug is definitely spendy. You probably get half as much as the smaller County Line box for more money. The quality and variety is exceptional though. I tried a couple boxes when they were doing local pickup at Birdie G’s early on in the pandemic.
I also found that County Line had too many lettuces for my taste when we were getting them in the spring. I preferred the Thao Farms boxes, but I don’t think he’s really doing that anymore and is back selling at the farmers markets.
Schaner Farms boxes can be ordered for pickup at Lady & Larder on the westside. They seem to have eggs in the box and citrus with little to no lettuces. Might work if you want to switch it up.
Girl & Dug is extremely high quality but terrible QPR. To put it mildly their box is really expensive. It’s fun to try out as they have a lot of unique produce you probably won’t see at many farms.
The quality of the produce from Tamai has been great. The beefsteak tomatoes are still good, in January! Strawberries are great too.
We pick up at Clementine and usually get something from the cafe too. If you call, they have a lot of frozen soup on hand, pantry staples, meal builders etc. Friday pickup. I often get a container tuna salad and make tuna melts for lunch etc
On Wednesday they do fruit boxes from Arnett Farms which are also good. We have mostly food delivery and sometimes the quality is really painful.
I get the CSA box from Yasukochi Farms (Oceanside). You pick up your box from Azay restaurant (Little Tokyo) on Tuesday. I’ve been impressed by the variety and quality of the produce. The flavor is great and the vegetables are clean. They look like they were detailed (like auto-detailing).
Looks like mostly good stuff, but artichokes, strawberries, and anemic tomatoes in January are to me contrary to the spirit of a CSA. Some of that’s likely coming from Mexico. They’re not pretending otherwise:
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but for around the same price you could get 100% organic from a single farm.
I like the one from here:
A good mix of fruit and veg and a dozen eggs.
Interesting alternative to a CSA. Sort of like they shop the farmers market for you. How’s the quality?
Very high quality, its all from Santa Monica farmers market. They shop it for you and choose whats good that week.
That’s a great business model.
Thanks foe the link. Interesting model. I love the idea of picking up a Sous vide steak with my veggie box.
