Helpful items to have for your CSA

The CSA shares have been bought and its is almost time for the crops to start coming in.  Here is a list of helpful items to have to help you deal with your share:

1. A Storage Freezer - For full disclosure, I don't have one of these.  I wish I did but my husband says we don't have any where to put it.  Finding a place for his homebrew is easy, but somewhere to store healthy foods for the entire family?  Nope.  I make due with the freezer on my fridge and by the end of the summer it is packed full.  Freezing is the easiest and most convenient way to preserve fruits and vegetables and then you can enjoy them all year long.
2.  A Dehydrator - You can also use an oven set on a low temp, but a dehydrator again is an easy way to preserve many foods such as tomatoes, hot peppers, and herbs.  Plus, drying food just gives you a new way to prepare things, which is good if you are tired of eating the same thing over and over and over.
3. Canning supplies - I don't do a lot of canning, and it really isn't all that hard, but canning is a good way to store things especially if you don't have a freezer.  It is actually very easy to make your own pickles and tomato sauce to be used in the off season.  I only can highly acidic things.  There was a picture in my microbiology textbook of 7 coffins due to a bad batch of canned beans, but again, done safely, its a great way to preserve.
4. Compost bin - True, my last post pretty much ripped the idea of having a home garden to shreds, but even with a few pots it is nice to have compost.  In processing your CSA produce, you are going to have a lot of scraps that make great compost.  Why throw these into a landfill, when they can actually do some good?  Or you can put it in buckets and take it back to your CSA.  They will love it.  But the real reason its nice to compost, well, there will be vegetables that you don't like or vegetables that you don't get around to processing in time and go bad.  By throwing them into my compost bin to be used again, I feel less guilty about my failures as a CSA cook because I'm saving the earth.  Woohoo.
5.  Friends who like vegetables - There are going to be weeks where you don't get the changes to use one single item of your share.  Before your know it, its time for the next pick up and now you have two bags on your counter just rotting.  Share the love!  See, your friends are going to think that you are being nice, when in fact, they are helping you out.
6. Friends who will pick up your share for you - Usually the same people that are listed above.  If you go on vacation or just busy, have a friend pick up the share for you.  You can't either let them keep the whole thing if you need a break or pay them with their favorite item.