Growing up, nearly all of the vegetables we ate came from the one-acre garden behind my grandmother’s house in a one-stoplight town in eastern North Carolina. Summer turned the whole family into farmers: Mom left the house at daybreak and returned several hours later sweaty and dusted with dirt. She’d pile us kids into the car, and five minutes later we’d be in the shade of the towering pecan tree in Grandma Flonnie’s back yard.

Before us sat bushel baskets of corn (that needed shucking), peas (that needed shelling), and butterbeans (that needed hulling). I was terrified of the corn worms, and I complained constantly through my forced servitude in the summer swelter. But come nightfall we’d gather at my mom’s table and feast on an A-to-Z smorgasbord of the freshest, most lovingly prepared vegetables you can imagine. And they were practically free -- thanks to the slave labor.

You could definitely say I carry scars all these 30 years later from those childhood summers, but they are not the wounds you might imagine. Those summers trained my taste buds, so much so that in today’s world of factory agriculture and vegetables shipped out of season from far-flung farms, I have trouble finding anything decent to eat. Vegetables are supposed to snap with flavor. And when I lug them home from the supermarket, undo plastic clamshells and slit the plastic bags, what’s inside barely brushes its potential.

Now that I'm an adult, I long for those bountiful summers of all-heirloom, all-organic, all hyper-local vegetables. Finally I understand what drove my mother and grandmother to become field hands every morning. And by lunchtime, they had turned my grandmother’s kitchen into an assembly line of canning jars and freezer bags. Dealing with those vegetables was a full-time job.

I don’t have the luxury of an acre of rich loam to cultivate everything my family eats. (Or the time, either.) Fortunately I have found a solution of sorts. There’s a movement in this country gaining momentum called Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Basically you buy a “share” of a farmer’s harvest and get a box of freshly grown vegetables every week of the season. What you get, and how much, depends on the farm and the weather. Click here for a really great overview article on the specifics of how CSA farm shares work.

I’m currently halfway through a six-week “mini” CSA season here in Miami. (We’re in the tropics, so most farms sleep for the summer.) I paid $162 ($27 per week), and I pick up a ¾-bushel box every Thursday that’s dropped off at a bakery a mile from my house. I guess you could say my farm share has taken me back to my childhood since I’m as happy as a kid at Christmas to see what wonderful veggies I’ll be eating for the rest of the week. And the best part? Not a worm in sight.

Stay tuned for further “chapters” of my CSA Dairy. Have you ever bought a farm share? I’d love to hear how you liked it. Leave your comments following this blog post.