I recently signed up to receive a bi-weekly farm box, my first ever, and have been delighted by the contents of my delivery. It also could not have come at a better time since I’ve been laid up with a cold this week. I’ve genuinely been gorging on fruits and veggies—sweet peppers and chard, figs and oranges, carrots and onions and yams. Much of this was tossed into a soup.

I like seeing dirt at the root of my bunch of carrots. I like that the skin of each orange was a bit marred, but the flesh inside was the best orange of my life. I like that a farm box represents Community Supported Agriculture (my friend Erin has written on this a whole bunch. See her original blog here). And I like that the farm owner enclosed a personal note about sharing figs with his daughter, the weather changing on the farm, the decline and swell of their harvest as the season is changing.

Only designed to supplement some of my market habits, and with the hope of cutting some trips to the grocery store, I doubt this investment will ever replace my most-Sundays trip to the Jack London Square farmers market. A bike ride to Blue Bottle coffee, perusing the market on foot, then laying in the grass with my paper while the sun shines…don’t know that it gets better than that.