Eat your (local) vegetables!!

A week's supply of fresh vegetables, grown by local farmers, delivered each week. Sounds amazing, doesn't it? Two years ago, I read about an innovative program in place in California, where urban households paid in advance to receive weekly bundles of veggies from nearby Californian farmers. At first glance, this saves both time and money, since you've paid up front and get a certain share of whatever is grown - and you are also spared some time at the supermarkets, since you know you will be getting the veggies each week.

Yet there are some caveats to the program as well. What if bad weather results in a low crop yield? What if it is a better year for some vegetables than others, so you receive a bumper crop of parsnips but are low on staples like lettuce and tomatoes? Where do you pick up the veggies, and can you take it on good faith that they will arrive as promised?

Furthermore, could such a program work in Winnipeg, where the growing season is so much shorter than in California?

There's a sense of adventure in wondering what random veggies will turn up at your door on Sunday, and what kind of tasty recipes you might discover either in old cookbooks or on the internet to teach an old vegetable new tricks. Having your own personal farmers' market delivered once a week, I think, would have just as many advantages as drawbacks, if not more.