Michael and I belong to a CSA, Spiral Path, which we pick up once a week from the Silver Spring Farmer’s Market.  Every once and a while Spiral Path will have an open farm day for its members.  It’s a cross between a harvest festival and a good backyard party, and we’ve been wanting to go for a while.  The only drawback is that the farm is 3 hrs away in PA.

However, this last weekend Michael and I had Ray visiting (who has a car that gets double the miles to the gallon that our car does). Coincidentally, there was an open farm day.  We decided to make a day of it, and got up REALLY early (before the sun rose) and drove to Spiral Path.

The drive was well worth it.  There was a fabulous pot-luck, tours of the farm, heyrides and other wonderful events.  Michael and I hadn’t quite realized how big Spiral Path is – they service 2250 members.  Just for perspective, most CSA’s have around 200 members.  Spiral Path is huge, but still very down to earth.  All the growing they do is organic, and you can see the values they hold in every choice they made about how the food is grown and prepared for shipment.  Michael and I feel very passionately about supporting efforts like this, and it’s great to know that we not only are getting great value for our food, but that it is going to a solid business model.

The most lovely part of the open farm day is the goodies that you get for free.  Spiral Path has a chunk of produce that it grows that for whatever reason isn’t considered sell-able – either it has blemishes, is too small, or has something else wrong with it.  Normally they donate the “reject food” to the local food shelter, but when they have the open farm days, they make this extra produce available to the members for free.

Our bounty from Spiral Path (the veggies) and Rock Hill (the apples)

Take a look at our haul:

We took home: 2 pumpkins, 2 butternut squash, 2 spaghetti squash, yellow squash, green beans, eggplant, summer squash, and a whole bunch of peppers, of various sweet and spicy flavors.

Finally, Spiral Path also had a herb garden where members could cut their own herbs.  We brought home mint, sage, and lots and lots of basil (for making pesto).

The event ended at 3, and by that time I was pretty tuckered out.  But we weren’t done yet.  On the way home, we stopped by Rock Hill Orchard, and picked up some Empire and Jonathan apples.  Just because it’s the beginning of fall, and that’s what you got to do.  Go apple picking.