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Foraging For Juneberries and Mulberries Close to Home

This morning I was perusing my Twitter feed and came across this tweet by Leda Meredith, a food preservation expert and forager here in NYC—she mentioned juneberries:

I followed the link to her blog post, where she talked more about juneberries. She mentioned that they were also called serviceberries, which triggered a memory of hearing about serviceberry trees not far from my apartment, and since it was still early enough in the morning, I headed out to find them.

When I arrived in the area I thought would be home to the serviceberry trees, I didn’t see them at first, and was a little bummed out… until I looked further down the hill and saw a tree full of berries—and there were a lot of them. [bctt tweet=”Juneberry jackpot!”]

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CSA Season Starts Again – My 10th Year With the Hellgate CSA

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Our first share of the 2015 Hellgate CSA season, in a rad new space.

This week marks my tenth season with the Hellgate CSA, a community supported agriculture organization that I helped establish up in northwestern Queens. A little history: it was originally called the Ravenswood CSA, based in the Ravenswood Houses senior center, and as CSAs work in NYC it was passed on the following year from the Americorps member who staffed it, to an all-volunteer team. The members interested in forming the core group all lived above the GCP, so we brought it north.

I was a core member for eight seasons (2006-2013) and am happy to see the CSA still going, well-managed by the current core group. I left the core group for a variety of reasons, one being my desire to move on and make room for new experiences. But I wanted to remain a member, so here I am.

(The other day I realized I’ve been a member of a CSA on and off for about 24 years; my first CSA experience was with Full Belly Farm in CA, which started my love of CSAs and eating seasonally.)

We’re also in a nice new space, away from the elements, and with a lot more room than we’ve had in the past.

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