Fruit and vegetable Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares have been available for years here in Columbus and many of us have partaken of their local produce goodness. Today I want to highlight several new twists on the classic CSA. Follow the links in each post for registration and more details. 1) Mockingbird Meadows Honey and Herb Farm is offering a Healthy Herbs CSA from June through February. From their website: "Designed to mirror the traditional vegetable CSA, our farm share program is meant to provide you with the basics of a healthy lifestyle through the use of our herbal helpers. Along with your share of fresh cut and dried healing herbs, handmade herbal health aides, seasonal tonic teas, fresh herbal foods and our raw honey we include 2 custom-made tinctures, 2 herbal consultations (not to exceed 2 hours), 2 reservations to our Farm Open House and 10% off product purchases. Each share will be a $300 investment for the year. Pick-ups will be once a month at various farmer's markets to be named soon. Please email Dawn form more information- dcombs@mockingbirdmeadows.com. Deadline for registration is May 31, 2011"

2) Frijolito Farm is selling farm gift cards. The idea is that farmer Wayne Shingler will accept investors now for early farm costs. Investors are given gift certificates loaded with credit equal to the amount of the investment plus 10% and can be exchanged for free range eggs, chicken meat, fruits, vegetables or anything else Frijolito sells. On December 1, any remaining balance can be redeemed for cash. This is micro-financing at its most local!

3) Based on their success in the fall, Blues Creek Meats in the North Market is expanding the meat CSA program. You choose the type of meat (beef, lamb, or beef/lamb/pork/goat/veal combo) and pick up once a month. The deadline for the spring CSA sign-ups just passed, though you might be able to call or go in person and see if any shares remain. Sign up now for summer-fall shares.

4) Green B.E.A.N. delivery just began offering their services in central Ohio. They make available a variety of CSA fruit and vegetable basket sizes plus customized additional options, all delivered to your doorstep. I was most intrigued by this concept when I heard a farmer recommending it, saying Green B.E.A.N. is providing the infrastructure to deliver his organic grains fresh to consumers. Green B.E.A.N. is offering me a trial basket over the next month so that I can write a full review soon.

5) Sunny Meadows Farms is offering a unique co-operative CSA. Full and half shares will include vegetables from their greenhouses and fresh cut flowers, fruit, herbs, fresh baked bread, canned goods, homemade soap, cheese, eggs, meats from a variety of local all-natural farms. This eclectic CSA would be great for someone who wants to explore the great variety of sustainable farms in central Ohio.

Do you have more CSA news to share? Please comment!

If you are ready to move beyond the CSA and grow your own, be sure to download my free Grow Your Garden ebook.

Italy has prosciutto, German has sausages and Spain has serrano. It seems to me that America's go-to cured meat is bacon.

Long ubiquitous at breakfasts, bacon has recently enjoyed resurgence to cult status, flavoring everything from beer to cupcakes.

With a populace growing in concern about high fructose corn syrup and additives, making bacon has also become the de rigueur for the adventurous home cook. We hopped on the bacon makin' wagon over two years ago and haven't bought a pack of the store bought stuff since.

The process is simple: Rub fresh pork belly (our favorite local source is Blues Creek Meats) with a curing mix of sugar, salt, and pink salt. Under refrigeration, allow the pork to absorb the salt and leach some liquid for 4-7 days. Rinse off the salt, pat dry, and smoke or oven roast. Slice, cook, and viola! You just made the best bacon you've ever tasted.

The joy of home charcuterie rarely stops with the first batch of bacon, however. A curious cook wonders how this or that will affect the flavor and begins experimenting.

This drive to excite our mouths with interesting new flavors led to the discovery of cider syrup bacon. Just as one might make maple flavored bacon by adding maple syrup to the cure described above, we tried adding 1/2 cup of Charlie's Apple Cider Syrup to a five pound batch of bacon last year. It imbibed the pork belly with tangy zest from the apples and the slightest hint of cinnamon.

When we pressed cider and made our own syrup this fall, we made another batch, knowing the ingredients even more intimately. Perfect for winter when we don't always want to fire up the grill, cider syrup bacon is best oven roasted, lest the delicate syrup flavors be overwhelmed by smoking. This charcuterie experiment was a keeper.

If you want to jump into the world of home cured bacon and other tasty meats, we recommend Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn's book Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. You can also follow the Charcutepalooza blog project in which we are participating. If you learn best in person, join us for our Charcuterie class at Franklin Park Conservatory on March 15 from 6:30 - 8 pm.

Added to Simple Lives Thursday 30th edition.