Photo courtesy of Frances Duncan

In a society where efficiency is praised and messes aren’t, being a member of a CSA can be daunting. It takes grit (pun intended) to collect, carry, wash, prepare and get creative with large quantities of vegetables. And it’s tempting to chuck the leftovers.

Thank goodness, then, for Plate to Plate, a Berkshires-based blog devoted to local foods in western Massachusetts and southern Vermont.

In successive posts, author Frances Duncan offers resources for preserving a variety of vegetables, snapshots of raspberry and blueberry patches in which you can feel the sun and smell the sweetness of her wanderings, and even a list of ideas for using cucumbers in new ways.

A Korean cold cucumber soup, anyone? Or perhaps some cucumber kimchi? Duncan definitely makes her readers think twice before crushing summer’s bounty down the disposal.