CSA - community supported agriculture

[milos_mommy]

Is anyone a member of one of these?

My mom's friend was a member, and she got so many extra vegetables she'd give some to us once in a while. At the time, I wasn't really sure what it was or how it worked, but now I'm interested. So anyone who's done this, please let me know:

1. Is it year-round, or seasonal, etc?
2. What's the pricing, how do you pay (if you don't want to say exactly how much, just if you pay by week or a yearly fee, and if it's cheaper/more expensive than what you'd spend at the grocery store/farmer's market).
3. What sort of goodies do you get?
4. How many people do you cook for with the food you get?

My concern is that doing this is kind of pricy (+$25/week), and although I'd probably get my money's worth in veggies, my family probably wouldn't be on board to help eat/cook them. I'm considering seeing if a friend would split the cost with me and we could divide the veggies up, but I'm also wondering if it'd just be cheaper/more economical to go to the farmer's market each week when it starts up.

 

[Psyfalcon]

Seasonal, that is the point. You're buying from local farms. Out in Oregon, seasonal might be 10 months. Not too much grows in January though.

Its usually a yearly fee. Most of the farmer's cash needs are early in the season. Buying seeds, gas for tilling, or hiring someone for that. Weekly cash is a nice option for the buyer without much money, but not as good for the farmer. Some still do it (here, some can take food stamps weekly) but I'm not sure why vs just selling the veggies at the farmers market.

If its just you, the market is probably a better bet, here, a full share runs around that price, but its designed for a family around 4 people. A few offer half shares, and of course, one dedicated kale eater might be able to eat that much in veggies! Typically though, its about one full brown grocery bag, which is a lot to eat in a week.

 

[milos_mommy]

Only one of them here goes by a yearly fee, the rest you pay weekly!

Some of them are only seasonal, but lots go year round and during the winter you get things like potatoes, carrots, winter squashes, honey, relishes and jarred tomatoes, even stuff like flour/wheat/dried beans...you can also do meat, seafood, and eggs.

 

[LostAndConfused]

We did this one year. It was great, but with only the two of us there was a lot of waste. We did a lot of dehydrating of the fruits, but we just couldn't go through that much food.

 

[GipsyQueen]

We have something like that I guess. For us it's call the "Green Box" or "Organic box". Basically what happens is, sign up with a company in your local area that distributes their green boxes from (mostly) local farms. (Of course in some months this isn't really possible, but you can get an ONLY regional box.) For us this is a year round thing and we signed up to get veggies and fruits every 14 days. You can also choose what size of box you get. We have the small box for 12,50€. We go through it within a week (I alternat between farmers market and green box, because I love going to the market)


1. Is it year-round, or seasonal, etc? For us year round
2. What's the pricing, how do you pay (if you don't want to say exactly how much, just if you pay by week or a yearly fee, and if it's cheaper/more expensive than what you'd spend at the grocery store/farmer's market). Every 14 days, and we pay every 14 days. It goes off our credit card automatically. We pay about 15€ for every box which is def. worth it.
3. What sort of goodies do you get?This week for example we recived: red beets (2), bananas(5), carrots(10), oranges(2), tompinabur(5), apples (3) and one pumpkin. There was nothing left (besides the tompunabur and apples) as of friday. Edit: we also got mushrooms.
4. How many people do you cook for with the food you get: For 2.