Our last CSA box was handed to us on October 2, and now that most of the produce is gone, I thought it'd be a good time to reflect on how things went.

USAGE: B.

I think I threw out more rotten vegetables than I did a year ago, but at the same time, we got a lot more, in terms of pure mass, than we did a year ago. Part of the problem this year was that I was lazier about storage, thinking I'd get to stuff sooner, and then circumstances would intervene and things would go bad sooner than I thought they would. Still, I'd estimate I used about 80% of what I got over the season. 

One area I'd have to give myself at best a gentleman's D in this year was herbs. I was really, really bad with the fresh herbs, maybe using a third of them if I'm lucky, and at least half of those were fridge-dried by the time I got to them. That's something I'm definitely going to need to work on in the future.

PRESERVATION: D

It's the end of the season, and I have one half-container of roasted red peppers in oil, and one ziptop bag of letcho to show for it. Now, I freely admit that this year's vegetable mix was not in the slightest bit conducive to preservation, and that at least one of the things I tried to preserve last year (dragon tongue beans) didn't freeze well at all, so I didn't bother this year, but still. Coming up with ways to make things and store them needs to be more of a priority next year.

EXPERIMENTATION: B-

This is not entirely my fault - the variety of products we got this year wasn't as great as it was last year, and the stuff that was new to me last year wasn't new to me this year. Still, I did a fair number of new things, mostly involving the omnipresent red bell pepper, that will serve me well in the future. I will, however, enjoy going most of the next six months without eating kale or chard, thanks.

OVERALL HAPPINESS: B

There are things I miss from last year. This year was completely devoid of garlic, from scapes to fresh to storage, and that was a huge disappointment. The garlic last year was amazing in terms of flavor, and it's the kind of thing you simply can't get at a supermarket. I miss the cucumbers - while we were drowning in the damn things last year, this year we got the one hentai cuke and that was all. On the other hand, the tomatoes and peppers were vast this year, and very, very good. I used more cherry tomatoes than I could count. And the overall quality was, like last year, excellent. We got some fantastic spinach, the aforementioned epic assload of chard and kale, quite a few jalapenos that came in very handy, and that odd Asian melon that turned out delicious. Unless something better crosses my path, I expect I'll be with Rock Spring again when next summer rolls around.