When I worked at the Reader it was often hard to find time to go to the grocery store, and in summer I envied my friends their leisurely trips to the weekday farmers’ markets and their hefty Angelic Organics boxes bursting with CSA bounty. Envied, that was, until Vera Videnovich stepped up to the plate.

You might know my former coworker  best for her beautiful yarns, which she spins and dyes from the wool of a flock of adorable sheep at her farm in southwest Michigan and has been selling at craft fairs and markets around town for the last few years. But she doesn’t just grow sheep on the farm — for several years she also ran a Reader-only CSA, delivering bags and boxes of farm-fresh vegetables and herbs to the office to 20 -odd subscribers in the office. It was a godsend, despite her mystifying ability to raise bumper crops of kohlrabi.

Now, of course, we’ve both unemployed.  I’ve got plenty of time to shop, and Vera has plenty of time to write. Her new blog, the Farmers Almanac, debuts today as a regular feature on the Local Beet. Check it out.