What is a CSA Program?

Community Supported Agriculture is a program of shared commitment between a community and its local farm. Members of the community who buy shares of the seasonal harvest get a weekly box of produce, a chance to participate in various farm activities, time to enjoy an annual harvest feast at the farm, and to be a true supporter of local agriculture. By selling shares in the harvest, the farmer gets a seasonal financial commitment from people in the community. Together, the community and the organic farmer realize the many benefits of locally produced, sustainable food production: the best possible seasonal produce, the least impact to the planet in both the farm methods and transportation, keeping more money in your local community, and the knowledge of where and how your food is grown.

What do you get, and what does it cost?

The exact contents of a weekly box vary with the season, and even week to week. What you will get is a variety of vegetables, herbs, and fruit in quantities that should feed a family of four for several meals. An example of a winter season box might include 1-1/4 poinds of kale, a poind and a half of spinach, a bunch of carrots, green onions, broccoli, a winter squash, a large bag of salad "reds and greens" and bunches of herbs to match the weekly recipe. A late summer box might have 3 pounds of heirloom tomatoes, 2 pounds of sweet peppers, some hot chilies, eggplant, Italian varietal summer squash, basil and other summer herbs, and, weather permitting, cooking greens and salad. For 2007, we will add fruit to the boxes as it becomes available from our young orchard.

Something else we include in our CSA boxes from time to time are fire roasted peppers. A tradition seen throughout the southwest, but almost entirely absent in Central California, is the open-air fire roasting of peppers. We have a small, hand operated chili roasted that allows us to fire-roast peppers at farmers market and here at the farm. We place the roasted peppers in vacuumed sealed bags and freeze them in order to add them to the boxes throughout the year.

We offer two options to our regular subscription. One of our members raises free-range, happy laying hens, and has a few dozen eggs available each week for most of the year. If you would like to receive a dozen eggs each week in your box, you can do so for $4.50 a week. The second option we offer is cut flowers for most of the year. For $8.00 a week, you will get a bunch of seasonal flowers in your box. In the spring, you might get sweet peas, larkspurs, snap dragons, and/or daffodils. In the summer, lilies, alstroemerias, dahlias, cosmos, and/or sunflowers.

Check out our Crop Schedule to see what we grow, or sign up for our Newsletter (with recipes) by sending us an e-mail.

Deliveries

We deliver our share boxes on Tuesdays and Thursdays to Mountain Feed and Farm in Ben Lomond, or you can come to the farm for pick-up.

Costs

CSA shares are purchased for a month at at time, for $30 a box. A 4-week month will cost $120, and a 5-week month will cost $150. You can occastionally skip a delivery and extend your subscription if you let us know in advance. In the winter, we occastionally might need to skip a delivery, if the weather just hasn't allowed us to produce enough harvest. Of course, if we skip a delivery, we will let you know in adavace, and extend your subscription.

Extras

In addition to the weekly deliveries, our CSA program offers the following:

1. work on the farm
2. annual farm dinner (included in summer/fall share price)
3. recipes and other useful information
4. website and newsletters
5. special orders for pickup at the farm

Risks

We promise to provide the best, most flavorful, wholesome food that nature allows us to coax from the earth. However, farming is not without risks or variations. In 2006, for example, the April rains destroyed our entire stone fruit crop. Winter harvests are always at the mercy of the weather, and tend to be smaller. Summer harvests are usually overflowing. As a CSA subscriber, you accept some of these risks. We will always do our best to give you good value, and your satisfaction is guaranteed.

Last updated: Aug 17, 2008

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