Riverbend Gardens Community Supported Agriculture Program (Edmonton)

Riverbend Gardens is extending a special offer to This Birds Day readers. Until August 5th, you can sign up for the remaining 11 weeks for 120$ off the full price for Family size and 100$ off the couples size. Visit http://riverbendgardens.ca/csa.html and enter coupon code BIRDSDAYFAMILY or BIRDSDAYCOUPLE to redeem your savings.

At the beginning of this summer, after five hours of planting our garden, I was struck with the realization that we wouldn’t be enjoying the fruits, or in this case – vegetables, of our labours for about two months. We wanted to get fresh, local food to hold us over until our garden began producing. A chance meeting led us to Riverbend Gardens and their Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Program and we are so glad that we made the connection.

Our week 3 delivery. When I picked up the package, I didn’t even get out of the parking lot before my sister and I started in on the carrots.

Taken from Riverbend Gardens:

Riverbend Gardens CSA is a subscription to high quality locally grown and produced vegetables. Rather than coming to one of your local farmer’s markets, a selection of delicious produce will be packaged and delivered to a commercial location, ready for your convenient pick-up.

My family got the chance to experience a four-week delivery of a family package which contains five to six vegetables. I ended up creating a video post of the first three weeks of our service to give you an idea of the sizes.

The peas were eaten in 30 minutes on a sunny Saturday morning on our deck. Our girls ate about 95% of them.

We received family favorites such as peas, carrots and dill, and a lot of items that I have to admit, I should be eating more of. We even received some vegetables that were a complete mystery to us.

Week 2 delivery from Riverbend Gardens including potatoes, dill, carrots, cabbage, fennel, cucumbers, and chard.

Their tagline “Our Roots Run Deep”, accurately sums up this family business. Aaron and Janelle are the third generation (in 2007, they welcomed the first in their 4th generation) in their family to farm this land.

During my visit, I got a tour around the farm and I learned that they irrigate from the North Saskatchewan River and they grow more than 20 different kinds of vegetables. They also sell bedding plants in the spring and grow the most unique Saskatoon bushes I have ever seen.

Fun fact: They planted their crops two weeks earlier than everyone else this year by snow blowing the snow off of their potato field and getting them in the ground while we were still cursing the snow.

You can read more about the Community Supported Agriculture on the Riverbend Gardens website and you can sign up to receive your own package. Packages start at $120 for a family-sized package ($100 for couple-sized) for a four-week program and you pick one of the preselected locations at the time of ordering. You can also follow Riverbend Gardens on Twitter (@RiverbendGarden).

So next year after I plant our garden and my bubble is deflated with the realization that we will need to wait for our harvest once again, I will be ordering our own package to keep us going.

Disclosure: A four-week family package was received for free in order to facilitate this feature. The opinions expressed in this post and video are those of the author and are not influenced in any way.

Sheri Landry

Sheri publishes, and writes at This Bird’s Day where she shares all of the thoughts in her head without the voices. Sticking mainly with content for Canadians, Sheri shares family stories, product information and anything that fits into her (and her family’s) daily activities.

www.thisbirdsday.com