CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and it’s our primary way of selling veggies here at Good Soil Farm! In the CSA model, the farm sells shares of veggies in the spring and the CSA members receive their shares of the harvest each week during the harvest season.
At GSF, we harvest our CSA veggies for 20 weeks from May to the end of September.
Becoming a CSA member is a great way to increase the veggies in your diet while supporting a local farm.
BUT, we’ve learned over the years that a CSA is not for everyone! And that’s ok!
We want our customers to be happy with what they get from the farm and so we’ve come up with some questions you can ask yourself to help you make the right decision for you.
If you’re curious about whether or not the CSA is for you, take this quiz!
- Do you like to cook?
If you don’t like to cook, enjoying a CSA for the long-term is going to be A LOT harder than if you do like to cook. Now there are as many ways to enjoy cooking as there are people! Maybe you like to plan out your meals, maybe you prefer finding a last minute recipe, or maybe you take inspiration from whatever you have on hand! But enjoying the work of creating a meal is a pretty basic prereq’ for enjoying being a CSA member!
If you don’t enjoy cooking at all, I would not recommend going any further with the CSA model!
However, if you’re new to cooking and want to learn, we’re here to give you the support to get started! - Are you excited about having to try ALL SORTS of Veggies?!?
CSAs give out all kinds of veggies–some that are “standard American veggies” like broccoli and lettuce–but they also include vegetables like mustard greens and kohlrabi! If you are the type of person who will try something new and different AND still be excited to try that new and different thing a week or so later, then I’d recommend trying a CSA!
If you see new veggies like exciting new paints on your artist’s palette, and learning about a new veggie makes you want to create a new “work of art” in the kitchen, then the CSA is definitely for you!
But if you are satisfied with staying with your favorite stand-bys, you might not be interested in a CSA! And that’s ok! Like I said, the CSA model is not for everyone! - Is there room for flexibility in your meal planning?
If you’re a meal planner, it can be hard to figure out how to make a CSA share work with those plans.
BUT, it can be done! While I am not personally a meal planner, my best friend, who is the most organized person I know (opposites attract :D), is! And she has been able to make the CSA work for her meal planning by working flexibility into her meal calendar AND by learning over her first few years in the CSA what KINDS of things to expect when.
However, she had to stick with it and be committed to the CSA model to make that learning curve. I’m hoping she’ll be able to write a blog post about this sometime soon!
- Do you want to eat seasonally?
I personally have loved learning about which veggies are locally available in the different seasons of the year. I love that I have to wait for fresh asparagus and arugula in the spring and tomatoes aren’t ready until late July or early August. I love that garlic scapes are a seasonal treat that are only available for a few short weeks each year. This waiting and anticipation are part of what makes growing and harvesting and eating seasonally so much fun!
If you’d rather get tomatoes all year and be able to eat broccoli in the heat of the summer, than the CSA is probably not for you.
I know I am biased towards the seasonal–after all, I decided to become a farmer!–but if you compare the flavor of a local, summer-picked tomato with a hot-house tomato grown any time of year, you’ll definitely notice a difference! A tomato isn’t meant to just give moisture to a sandwich. It’s meant to give us the summer sun in a juicy punch of flavor.
And tomatoes are just the classic example of eating seasonally! As a CSA member, you’ll get to experience the scent and flavor of summer in lemon-basil, as well as arugula with actual flavor, mustard greens that give your nose that refreshing horseradish tickle, kale that’s not just tough and bitter but has a hint of sweetness, red-ripe watermelon that can’t be compared to that pale pink stuff you can buy in winter, and all sorts of flavors in between! - Are you interested in supporting a local farm?
The local food movement is a wonderful thing. It builds up the local economy and supports local agriculture.
But joining a CSA is going a step further. It’s joining the membership of a particular farm because you believe in their mission and you trust the farmers to grow your food in the healthiest way they know how.
Being a CSA member means you share in both the risks and rewards of the farm. Sometimes a crop fails due to weather or pests, but sometimes there is a bumper crop and you get to enjoy that too.
By supporting a CSA farm, for one season or many, you are supporting that farm so that they can continue to support you. - Do you have time to learn to eat the CSA way?
Learning to use your CSA share each week will take time. It might even take a few years. And then there will still be weeks when you forget about something in the back of the fridge and it goes bad. Or your week might just not go as planned and you feel like you’ve failed to use those veggies well.
That’s actually ok! As long as you’re willing to be patient with yourself as you learn how to eat the CSA way, you’ll make progress each year, improving both your eating habits and the local food system! - Are you a gardener?
Being a gardener actually does NOT conflict with being a CSA member! Many of our BEST CSA members are actually gardeners!
Often, CSA members enjoy raising and preserving their own food and they can’t get enough of local food! If you have your own garden, chances are you love veggies and will want to freeze, can, dehydrate, or pickle your excess veggies for the winter. If this sounds like you, I’d encourage you to join the CSA to supplement your own garden.
But you don’t need to be a gardener either! CSA members get all the benefits of the freshest garden veggies without having to do the work!
What did you think?
How did your answers match up? Is the CSA right for you?
If the CSA is right for you, go ahead and join!
Not ready? Join our newsletter!
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