CSA recommendations?

[JessBee]

I am looking for more info on joining a local CSA from people who have or are participating in one. Where do you go, how much do you pay, for how many weeks, and how much to you pick up every week?

[loucook]

One of my clients has a CSA from Drumlin Farms. She actually splits a share with another couple.. her half is $320 for 20+ weeks and gets supplemented with fruit from farms slightly South of us. This past week she mentioned her pick up included the following

2 heads of lettuce
some basil
some Cilantro
Bok choy
Swiss Chard

hope that helps!

[abourget]

You might check out Potager Farm/Gilson's Herb Lyceum in neighboring Groton. I believe this is the first year they've had a CSA.

http://www.gilsonslyceum.com/gilsonherbs/HOME.html

[dweir]

Rob and I joined the World Peas CSA last year and had veg with fruit. Pricing is available in their brochure. When you pick up in Dracut, you can snip free herbs and flowers from the PYO garden. We loved the variety of veg, which featured crops more familiar to Asian and other cuisines. (Although we did skp the bitter melon!). The full share was HUGE... we would need to eat lots of veg each day to get through it.

brochure: http://nesfp.nutrition.tufts.edu/dow...SABrochure.pdf
CSA homepage: http://nesfp.nutrition.tufts.edu/worldpeas/csa.html

[Amber]

I signed up for Jones Farm in Chelmsford this year (jonesfarm.net). It's their first year doing a CSA, and they haven't officially started yet (this Tuesday will be the "first" week). I paid $525 which works out to approx $25/week if they go all the way through to Oct. 26th; or just slightly more than I was paying at the Farmer's Market every week.

Two early pickups have yielded a) small bag of lettuce and Swiss chard; and b) small bag each of spinach and lettuce, and a bunch of arugula. The cost to buy the same off the shelf at their farm stand was less than $6. The kids and I are big veggie eaters, so even if the selection is small right now the quantities have been disappointing, although I am giving them the benefit of the doubt until next week. Ours doesn't include fruit, but we were supposed to have the ability to cut herbs as well which I haven't seem come to fruition yet.

I'm really hoping I get my money's worth. In my mind part of the reason for doing a CSA is to get better value and quality while supporting local farmers. If 100 families pay you $525, that $52,500 should include a fair ROI for the CSA members. I plan to follow the progress on my blog by taking pictures of what I pick up each week and comparing the weekly investment made to comparable pricing at Whole Foods for their organic produce. It will be an interesting experiment!

[Amber]

My first blog post. Going to the common today to shop and see what the price differences are! Will update this weekly.


http://youlostbaby.blogspot.com/2010/06/community-supported-agriculture-csa.html