Keeping fresh produce alive for the whole week

The number-one reason people stop ordering from local farms isn't price or inconvenience — it's the guilt of throwing away produce that wilted before they got to it. Almost all of that is a storage problem, and almost all of it is fixable with about ten minutes on pickup day.

The rules that actually matter

Cold and dry kills greens. Cold and slightly damp keeps them alive. Wash, spin, wrap in a clean towel, bag, fridge. Five to seven days. Treat lettuce and kale and chard the same way.

Most root vegetables want the opposite — cool, dark, and out of a plastic bag where they'll get clammy. Carrots are the exception: snap the tops off (the tops pull moisture out of the root), then store like a green.

Herbs are flowers. Stems in a glass of water, loose bag over the leaves, fridge. Basil sulks in the fridge — leave it on the counter.

Tomatoes and stone fruit, when they finally arrive

Counter, not fridge, until they're ripe. Once ripe and you're not eating that day, then fridge. Cold kills flavor on a green tomato; cold just slows down a ripe one.

This rule is the reason supermarket tomatoes taste like nothing.

The freezer is your insurance policy

Anything you can't eat in time, freeze. Berries on a sheet pan, then into a bag. Greens blanched thirty seconds, squeezed dry, into a bag. Herbs chopped into ice cube trays with olive oil. None of this takes real skill — it just takes deciding on Sunday that Wednesday-you will not eat all the kale.

A pickup-day routine

When you get home: unpack, wash and spin every green, wrap and bag, trim carrot tops, herbs into water, eggs into the fridge (where you put them is fine — the door is overrated as a villain), and decide what's going in the freezer. Twenty minutes once a week, and the entire box makes it to the next pickup.