Julia Mangan

I love this time of year, don't you? Everything is coming back to life after the cold dormancy of winter. It's like someone turned on the lights with all the vibrant color returning to the earth. One of the places that color returns to is our plates! We once again have all sorts of beautiful and delicious in season produce to choose from again. The tastiest and freshest produce comes from our own backyard, both figuratively and literally. So strap on your Ergo and take the kids out to find some local, flavorful fruits and vegetables. Below are eight ways to find produce grown locally.

Community Supported Agriculture

Community Supported Agriculture, also known as a CSA, is a wonderful opportunity to get to know some of your local farmers while sharing in their locally grown goodness. I decided to join a CSA one year and really enjoyed it. The way most of them work is you pay up front for a share of what the farm produces and receive weekly offerings of the fruits and vegetables they've grown.

My beautiful Marcella was born in the early morning hours on a Spring morning. This is her story. I awoke Saturday morning at 4am, March 21, 2009 to a trickle of water. My husband, Josh, wanted to call the midwife but I assured him labor had not begun. We went back to sleep and woke up around 8am and called the midwife. Per her instructions, we headed over to the birth center a couple hours later. The midwife gave me a strip to check the fluid and it was indeed amniotic fluid. We left to do some walking around and get some lunch since labor had not started yet. Around 2 pm the midwife recommended we go home and get some rest since I was still not in labor. After a couple stops (one for Red Raspberry leaf tea), we went home and did just that. Around 7pm, I went and laid down. Contractions had begun. I had remembered from my Bradley Childbirth classes that if the contractions fade out after a bath, it isn't real labor yet. So my mom got the tub ready for me. The water felt wonderful. My mom