I often have running-away-to-start-my-own-farm fantasies, but being the inveterate urbanite that I am, I would surely starve within months if I ever tried to make this fantasy a reality. Instead, I decided to feel closer to the land by signing my family up for weekly deliveries of locally grown produce during a summer in Northern California.

Community-supported agriculture is a system in which people buy shares of a farm in exchange for a portion of the crops, or, as we did, make a smaller commitment by subscribing to deliveries from one or more local farms. CSAs (as individual programs are called) enable you to enjoy food that is picked when ripe, which tastes infinitely better than food that is picked early to survive the shipping to grocery stores. Think fragrant, tree-ripened peaches and fresh-off-the-vine tomatoes that still taste like the sun. CSAs also help keep small, independently owned farms in business in a not-so-friendly big agribusiness climate. Most CSA farms are organic and, with the support of a consistent base of customers, can take risks with the specialty produce we love to see at farmers' markets, like purple carrots and Romano beans.

The first CSA we tried was Farm Fresh to You, which delivers produce from Capay Farm, 90 miles northeast of San Francisco. Like most CSAs, Farm Fresh lets you know via e-mail what will be in each week's box, so you can plan accordingly. It also gives you a general time frame in which to expect your delivery.

The appointed afternoon came, and my 3-year-old son, Jasper, who loves delivery anything, was the first one at the door. There was our box of glorious produce. Though the box did not hold toys, as he had hoped, the element of surprise and the beautiful presentation made Jasper see vegetables in a whole new light (or so I'd like to think).

We ate the ambrosial nectarines fresh. The black plums, on the other hand, cried out for grilled lamb. Summer produce shines best when prepared simply, so I poached the green beans and tossed them with sesame oil, made Capay's cucumber-salad recipe, used the Sungold cherry tomatoes and green-leaf lettuce for another salad, and baked a tiny blueberry crumble. The giant, purple Toledo onion was more than I was likely to use in a week but reduced down to a savory-sweet onion jam that disappeared in an evening.

Fun! But I couldn't help wanting more—like, say, farm-fresh eggs or meat. A quick Internet search led me to Eating with the Seasons, a larger CSA that rounds up produce from a few farms, including an egg ranch and a beef ranch. The eggs from Glaum Egg Ranch were so fresh, I took to having a poached egg for breakfast every morning with a slice of Phil Foster's cantaloupe. The grass-fed beef from Paicines Ranch was lean but flavorful, not to mention hormone-free. The heirloom tomatoes joined cactus leaves from a local farmer's market for a salad, and I came up with a vegetable korma mild enough for a 3-year-old. The Swiss chard was a challenge—but I pureed it and combined it with Thai seasonings for a bright, summery stew, and the pink Chioggia-beet slaw was a hit among the grown-ups.

I loved the challenges and rewards of fresh-produce deliveries, but my favorite part about participating in a CSA was the way it brought my family closer to our food sources and the people behind them. I liked reading the news from Capay Farm, where the Satsuma Mandarin trees are so loaded "Grandpa can no longer drive his tractor through the orchard without ripping off tree branches." And I rejoiced to hear how Becky Hubert saved her family's CSA program (threatened when her father's poor health forced him to downsize) by joining efforts with other local farms to create Eating with the Seasons. Knowing that we are helping to support small farms, and even changing the way America thinks about food, is truly delicious.