What is
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)?
“CSA” means Community Supported Agriculture. CSA lets consumers support family farms directly, provides access to fresh, high quality food in season, encourages sustainable agricultural practices, and helps build a sense of community and land stewardship among everybody involved. In CSA, “shareholders” buy “shares” of the production from the farm in advance of the season. This early infusion of cash allows the farmer to finance the year’s production without a loan, and assures that all the production from the farm is sold before the seeds are ever planted. This risk sharing between the shareholders and the farmer is a huge benefit to the farmer, and allows her to concentrate on producing lots of tasty, healthy, and safe food for her shareholders.
If you decide to join Abbe Hills Garden CSA and have never eaten from the garden before, this will be a new experience for you. You will enjoy the pleasures and risks of eating seasonally and locally. You will be getting the freshest and most nutritious food possible, harvested at the peak of its maturity. It may taste differently than you expect, probably better. Sometimes there is so much of something that you actually get tired of it (“Mom, do we have to eat corn-on-the-cob again?”). Worse yet, sometimes there is just not enough of something that you really, really love. We will give you ideas to get you through the times of abundance, and use good farming practices to reduce the number of times you are disappointed and to extend the time that each vegetable is available.
Well, Laura and her workers do most of the work. We grow and harvest the food and get it ready for distribution to the shareholder families. Shareholders come to the farm, which is about two miles north and west of Mount Vernon, once per week to pick up their share of that week’s garden production.
The season lasts 20 weeks and will start either the week of June 8/12 or 15/18, depending on the weather up to that point. The regular pick-up times are Mondays 4:30-7 p.m. and Thursdays 4:30-7 p.m. until the week of Sept. 21/24. After that, everybody picks up at the same time, Saturdays from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. from Oct. 3 until Oct. 24 or 31.
If you decide to join the CSA, you select Monday or Thursday for your regular pick-up night during the summer.
We’ll put the vegetables out on tables and in tubs in our big shed. Some things will be washed, although most will still have some field dirt on them. There is a blackboard that tells you the amount of each kind of food that you should take for your share. Here’s where you have to do some work. You go around the room, and sometimes outside on the hayrack, to select and weigh your own share. Be sure to bring your bags and boxes to carry it all home. There will be plenty of vegetables that we have in large supply and less of the things that don’t grow so well. Whatever we have, we share it among everybody. There is often excess of certain crops like leafy greens and herbs (because I like to grow them) that are available for you to take whatever you will need for that week.
While we wash a few vegetables like potatoes and carrots, you shouldn’t eat them until you wash them again at home. At this point, we use pond water to wash the big dirt off the vegetables, but pond water can contain some nasty guys that you don’t want in your stomach. So, WASH EVERYTHING BEFORE YOU EAT IT. PLEASE!!!! There might be a few of those guys still lurking on the vegetables.
Can I
bring the family?
Your whole family is welcome to come for a visit each week, especially children and grandchildren. If your children are young (5 years or under), please keep them with you or within sight while you are at the farm. Although I try to keep the farm as kid-safe as possible, there are still a number of ways that toddlers find to get into a predicament with an animal or a machine. Also, please, no pets. Kids, chickens, and kitties mixed with pets, even the ones on a leash or inside your car, almost always cause more excitement than I can stand!
Where do
I park?
There is plenty of solid ground for parking inside the farmyard and along the house driveway. There are rock driveways for both the farm yard and my house. On CSA nights, we make a one way street around the buildings, with the entrance at the farm driveway and the exit from the house driveway. Please NEVER park on the road. We must be very careful never to restrict the use of the road for other vehicles. I have a few spots for elderly and disabled people near the big shed, but for all the young and healthy people (that’s almost everybody!), the parking is along the house driveway. The goal is to keep the cars away from the areas where the kids play. It’s a little farther to carry your vegetables, but it will make my insurance agent and the county zoning director much happier people if we can keep the cars away from the buildings and off the side of the road.
What
does it cost?
In 2009, a regular-sized share costs $330, or $16.50 per week. This should be enough food for two adults and two children, or two good vegetable eating singles. A large share is about double this amount, and costs $630. There is also an out-of-town-half-the-summer option for each share size. The half-season shares are $220 for regular size and $420 for large size. Since most of the gardens production is concentrated in the fall, these share cost slightly more than half of those of the full season. The half-season shares will begin the week of August 17/20. Payment plans are available. Please talk about this with Laura when you register.
What if
I miss a vegetable pickup?
Vacations, busy schedules, and sometimes plain old forgetfulness might cause you to miss a pickup night. Unfortunately, because of the large number of families who come to the farm each week, it’s pretty difficult for Laura and her workers to make many adjustments to the schedule to accommodate missed pickups. If 7 p.m. comes and there are unclaimed vegetables, we will send them to the food pantry or soup kitchen if they are fragile and need to be eaten quickly (like leaf lettuce or peas), or keep them for the next pickup night if they are something that stores easily (like potatoes or onions).
If you know ahead of time that you are going to be gone, the best solution is to send a neighbor or relative to pick up your vegetables for themselves or to save for you. If you are only going to be gone one week, sometimes Laura can switch you to the other night that week. Send an e-mail on the Saturday before you want to switch and she’ll let you know if it can be done. Arranging for the switch for weeks further into the future is unlikely.
If you know you won’t be able to get to the farm before 7 p.m. some night, you can also e-mail Laura at least one day before to bag your vegetables for you to pick up later that evening. We can’t promise this will work every time, but we’ll try.
If you forget (AGH!!!!), be happy knowing that your good food won’t be wasted. Either some hungry person or some other shareholder will be enjoying at least one nice meal that week thanks to you!
Can I
pick up my vegetables earlier than 4:30?
Short answer: Nope. Mondays and Thursdays are CRAZY days at the farm. We pick nearly everything we will need for that night’s pickup, and we are often frantically working right up until 4:30 p.m. As we harvest throughout the day, we put the vegetables in the cooler, which is often packed to the ceiling and pushing on the door. In order to keep the quality of your vegetables as high as possible, Laura and one or two distribution workers set out the vegetables and calculate how much each share will get of each vegetable in only the last 30 minutes before we open. IT’S A NUTHOUSE!!! And there is clutter everywhere. And Laura is usually a grump. Please don’t come earlier than 4:30 or she might grump at you!
Is the
farm safe for children?
Laura loves to have children visit the farm and they are welcome every time you come to pick up your vegetables. While there are lots of fun things to do – like running in big circles around the shed (which seems to be one of their most favorite things to do here), petting kitties, picking cherry tomatoes, “driving” a tractor, helping to weigh your vegetables, or yakking with friends – there are also lots of ways to get in trouble, especially for the littlest kids. I try to keep the most dangerous farm equipment hidden from children, but they are pretty good at finding the one thing I never thought would interest them. For this reason, please keep children 5 years and under with you or within your line of sight while you are at the farm.
Older children can be left to play alone, but please remind them to be careful. They should not climb on any farm machinery without permission from either you or me. I try to show all the older children a line in the floor of the shed that will keep them away from the tools if they stay on the right side of it. The chickens might sometimes be out when you arrive, and if they are, children should never chase them and NEVER hassle a rooster. The roosters we have now are incredibly docile, but they will fight if they feel threatened or if somebody starts chasing their girlfriends. Kitties sometimes scratch, but it’s usually not life-threatening. I keep peroxide and band aids in the shed, so let me know if you need them. Thanks to your supervision in the past, we’ve had very few injuries, and with your help, I want to keep it that way this season.