What's Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) all about?
Participating as a member of a CSA is a lifetsyle shift into a unique form of eating close to the seasons and the ecosystem we live in, and in direct relationship with the person who grows your food.
Community Supported Agriculture works because members of the community offer the monetary resources necessary for the farmer to grow vegetables for them for an entire season to feed their families well and with high integrity. In essence, I become "your" farmer. When I receive your request for membership, I commit to buying seed, planning enough variety, type and amount of crop to grow, preparing the soil in a sustainable manner, and planting, weeding and cultivating enough crop for the appropriate number of members. I make a commitment to each member to personally harvest and deliver a bountiful, diverse, fresh, nutritious, all natural, labor intensive vegetables for the whole season.
For their part of this relationship, CSA members commit to pay for their share of the harvest, and pick up their vegetables during their chosen pick up hours for the whole season. Of course, flexibility is assumed in this arrangement on both sides for lots of reasons, for example, some vegetable varieties that are planted aren't successful and therefore are not harvested, and some members go on vacation or forget to pick up their share some weeks. This is expected and not perceived as any "failure" of the general commitment.
I am always working to provide information about the experience of being a member of our CSA so you may make an informed decision about whether this unique way of eating, buying, and relating to your food, the land and your community will work for you for the season you commit to. Above all else, CSA's are about developing integrity in human relationships, to each other, to what we put in our bodies, to the place we live, and the planet.
Whole Earth CSA members generally express that their CSA experience has exceded their expectations. It's an adventure for us all as we grow in appreciation of the benefits of a CSA that we could not have predicted without experiencing them. As any partnership, this is an evolving, creative process. We all learn together.
HARMONY & ABUNDANCE!
Shyryn Joy
Delivery Schedule Update:
Due to slow growing vegetables (brrrr!), we will not be able to harvest or deliver vegetables over the holidays as planned. Please enjoy your just delivered beautiful roots and greens while the slower to mature crops come more fully into their own sometime in January.
Rest assured, we are walking the field regularly willing our crops to grow, and fertilizing in a gentle and balanced way. The good news is, as Matt's Grandpa, a lifelong farmer, reminds us, the longer the crops take to grow, the more nutritious they become. As always, we will email you a week in advance of our next delivery (9 weeks left in the season!) as soon as we observe the proper amount of growth in the plants.
Meanwhile please enjoy safe, joyful and warm holidays!
Sharon, Matt & Carrie
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