Griggstown Farm opens CSA program – By Lois Heyman
Posted on June 2, 2009
New CSA Opened by Griggstown
As Central Jersey residents join community-supported agriculture, or CSA, programs in increasing numbers, they can look forward to enjoying just-picked vegetables from local farms that are gearing up for the spring growing season.
But how many CSA shareholders also can expect to get a fresh pie, bread or wedge of artisanal cheese along with their veggies?
In Griggstown Quail Farm & Market’s new CSA program, members who choose a comprehensive share will receive a week’s worth of fresh vegetables and herbs, a locally sourced dairy product and a gourmet baked item at each pick-up throughout the season.
Customers who participate in the program also will receive discounts on the all-natural, free-range poultry and other items sold at the farm market store, in the Griggstown section of Franklin. Soups, sausages and other prepared foods and gourmet products are among the store choices.
Griggstown’s chef, Matthew Sytsema, also expects to attract customers to the market — set among picturesque 19th-century villages and lanes along the Delaware-Raritan Canal — by offering cooking classes both to shareholders and the general public.
Other local chefs and restaurateurs will join Sytsema in conducting sessions on pickling, knife skills, canning and preserving, along with sharing recipes that will best use the bounty available from Griggstown’s garden.
“We’ve always had a small garden here,” says Sytsema, who brought in farmer Johann Rinkens this year to turn three of Griggstown’s 65 acres over to 150 varieties of vegetables, flowers and herbs — all grown without the use of synthetic pesticides or fertilizers.
From June through October, each week a seasonal crop will be harvested, and for $30 a week, participating vegetable shareholders will stop in between noon and 6 p.m. Thursdays or Fridays to pick up the currently available produce.
The earliest crops in June will include cold hardy greens and root vegetables, while an explosion of tomatoes, peppers, squash and much more will swell visitors’ packages through the summer.
