A new meal-planning service helps CSA members cook their veggies. The business, Local Thyme, offers CSA farms the opportunity to have customized recipes that match what’s in the share each week. It also offers a second tier of service, with more general seasonal recipes. In both cases, the members of the CSA get access to the website www.localthyme.com for recipes, storage tips, and other cooking resources.

“Lots of people think about joining a CSA but decide not to because they are intimidated by the idea of keeping up with all those veggies,” said Patricia Mulvey, one of the founders of Local Thyme. “Or they have quit a CSA because they felt guilty about wasting too much that was delivered.  Then there are thousands of families who are CSA members, but wish someone could take the work out of plotting what to do with their weekly share.”

Local Thyme opened last spring to solve these problems and intially offered the service to individual members. 
“But each of our farms loved the concept so much, that they asked us to come up with a price to sell the service directly to them to share with all of their members,” Mulvey said.

The price this year is $500 for 20 weeks of newsletter recipes, and annual access of all members to the website. The price for the full service is $3,000 for 20 weeks. It includes customizing three menus (vegetarian, meat eating and gluten free) to use up all vegetables in each weekly delivery, along with a shopping list for additional items needed, plus website access for members.

So far, six farms in the Upper Midwest have subscribed to the full menu plans for the coming season: Angelic Organics, Crossroads Community Farm, Tipi Produce, Wholesome Harvest, Keewaydin Farms, and Featherstone Farm.
Founded by Personal Chef Patricia Mulvey, an editor of From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm Fresh Seasonal Produce , and Laura Gilliam, an organic gardener who specializes in preserving, fermenting and pickling vegetables and in gluten-free diets, Local Thyme’s goal is “Ending Veggie Guilt One Box at A Time”. 

“While recipe websites are abundant on the internet, none of the chef-tested websites are focused on local, seasonal produce, and none are focused on the kinds of produce grown by most CSAs,” Mulvey said. “FoodNetwork.com has 4 kohlrabi recipes, Epicurious has 14, Local Thyme currently has over 50 and we are adding more each season. And our recipes are truly seasonal – you won’t find asparagus recipes that call for tomatoes here like you will on most cooking websites.”

She explained more about how the services work from the farmer’s perspective: “We have a website where we publish recipes, menus, shopping lists, cooking tips and tricks, vegetable id/storage etc. When a farm partners with us, they are provided a code to share with their members. Their members then use that code to access the site and set up their own account.

“Once the farmer knows what they plan to pack in their box, they tell us. Depending on whether they are a newsletter plan or a full service plan, we then provide the farm with two recipes to publish in their newsletter highlighting the vegetables of their choice, or we craft the full meal plans that use all the vegetables. When our meal plan is done, and our recipes and shopping list are available online, we email the members of that farm that their plan is ready when they are.

“The website is also searchable, so any member can go on at any time and poke around for Kohlrabi recipes, or sweet potato recipes or what-have-you. Each member has their own recipe box where they can save their favorite recipes, and they have the ability to leave comments about recipes and rate recipes with 1-5 star ratings. In our first year, we achieved a 92% 4-5 star ratings, and no recipe was rated less than 3 stars.”

Wholesome Harvest Farmer Chris Zastrow said: “Local Thyme is an awesome value added resource for my farm. I don’t know whether a recipe is going to work, I’m a farmer, not a chef. So having these experts available to my members means I don’t have to waste time looking for recipes, I can do what I want to do — be in my fields working. And my members get great recipes that work from real chefs. AND they don’t call me anymore at 6pm to ask “what should I do with this kohlrabi” What a load off!”

Local Thyme also is developing pricing for farmers market growers. Check it out at www.localthyme.com.