What is community supported agriculture?

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a partnership between a farm and the people it feeds. Local people sign up to become members of the farm at the beginning of the growing season and in turn become shareholders of the harvest, receiving a share each week — fresh from fields they know and love and grown by farmers they trust.

Our CSA program is modeled some of the original New England CSA programs. Members enjoy free-choice harvest selection, abundant u-pick crops, a buzzing flower and herb garden, and an open invitation to visit the farm, fields, playground, and picnic areas.

What does membership look like?

weekly produce

The heart of our CSA program is a 26-week harvest season of over 200 varieties of vegetables, flowers, herbs, berries, preserve and specialty crops. From early June through Thanksgiving, members come to the farm on Saturdays from 9am-2pm or on Tuesdays from 1pm to 6pm to fill a large canvas tote with whatever they choose from rows of freshly harvested produce set out in our barn. Selection changes with the seasons and you decide what goes in your bag! 

Because we don’t ship our food you get it the same day it was harvested for unparalleled freshness, flavor, and nutrition. Our model also enables us to plant smaller batches of heirloom varieties selected for taste, beauty, and novelty rather than wholesale marketability. Even seasoned foodies will discover something new.

But free choice produce is just the beginning . . .

U-PICK crops

Each week, the farm is speckled with seasonal u-pick crops which members may harvest themselves directly from the fields. Pints of strawberries, sugar snap peas, frying peppers, Jack-O-Lanterns, green beans, cherry tomatoes and more…

The farm is open for member u-picking 7 days days a week, sunrise to sunset. 

herbs & FLOWERS

We maintain an extensive u-pick cut flower and herb garden for members to enjoy. The garden is a place to picnic with friends, let your children play, pick a big bouquet for the table, and gather fresh herbs for the week.

We grow over 20 varieties of perennial and annual herbs — including basil, parsley, cilantro, dill, various mints, thyme, sage, sorrel, lemongrass, lemon verbena, culinary lavender, chamomile, tulsi — and over 30 varieties of cut flowers including dahlias, snapdragons, cosmos, zinnias, strawflower, amaranth, celosia, and sunflowers. 

The garden is also open to members everyday, sunrise to sunset.

Preserves & specialty crops

Throughout the harvest season there are ample opportunities for members to bring home bulk farm produce in addition to their weekly haul in order to make preserves like dill pickles, cabbage krauts and kimchi, basil pesto, canned tomatoes, pickled beets and green beans, and dried herbs. We also grow our own heirloom popcorn and dent corn to mill into cornflour in the Fall.

connection

Our mission is to create a place where members can develop a relationship to the land, plants, people, and natural processes that provide for their tables. We do this in three ways:

ACCESS

The farmland, gardens, and picnic areas are open to members every day, sunrise-to-sunset, to gather u-pick crops, to enjoy the open space, to hang out with friends and family, and to watch the seasons change in the fields. (In 2024 we are building a nice playground for kids under the oaks!) Tuesday and Saturday pick-up days are particularly festive with neighbors chatting and children running through the rows.

participation

We host occasional volunteer days and work parties around major seasonal tasks like the potato harvest. Working with a group of people to bring in a big harvest is an unforgettable experience, forging a bond to land and neighbors and adding a rich note of satisfaction to your meal!

stories

Wendell Berry said it best, “A significant part of the pleasure of eating is one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and world from which food comes." We write a newsletter each week with recipes, news, stories and musings from the field. The newsletters are a window into what went into the food you take home and the place it came from. Read previous newsletters here.

Value

Our model frees us up to do what we do best — farm — which means we can offer a huge diversity of heirloom crops to inspire you in your kitchen. The farm and gardens offer a weekly moment of respite, open space, and connection that many members find essential.

Dues are calculated based on how many adults will be eating from your weekly harvest share. Each adult using the farm’s produce in a household or group is counted regardless of their participation on the farm or exact degree of vegetable consumption. Kids ride free. 

COST FOR THE 26-WEEK HARVEST SEASON:

• ONE-adult HARVEST share: $1,430 ($55 per week)

• two-adult HARVEST share: $2,288 ($88 per week)

• three-or-MORE ADULT HARVEST share: $2,496 ($96 per week)

Prices above include 26 weeks of free-choice produce as well as all u-pick crops and flowers and 7-day-a-week access to the farm.

share price assistance / SNAP EBT:

We believe farm fresh food should be accessible to everyone. To request Share Price Assistance, please indicate so when you sign-up. Alternatively, please consider making a contribution towards our Share Price Assistance Fund. This fund goes directly towards subsidizing the shares of families and individuals in our community who would like to join this CSA but are in need of a reduced price share. We also accept EBT/SNAP benefits.