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The wife and I are still in the planning stages here and evaluating some options. For reference, we are a small operation and I still work a regular remote day job. We started out just growing for ourselves and then selling off the excess to local farmers markets, but we kept consistently selling out so we began planting more and diversifying our offerings. We also began to have several people from the markets set up outside deals with us.
With 2022 just around the corner the thought is beginning to dawn on us that this might be an ideal way to take things to the next level. My wife is a homemaker, so she has the time to commit to it, and I am always glad to join in on the weekends and evenings. I work in finance in my day job, but come from a commercial agriculture background from my Mother's side of the family.
Anyone have any experience with getting this type of thing off the ground? What are some of the challenges and things I need to keep in mind if we go this direction? We have been entirely off the books up til now, but I am probably going to be creating some type of LLC for the farm in 2022.
No direct experience with doing them but there are a number of farms large and small around here, a few clients of mine, who do them. Important to have a planned harvest that will provide ripe items every week. I think that would be the daunting part. Having the variety of things every week that I see my friends share.
No direct experience with doing them but there are a number of farms large and small around here, a few clients of mine, who do them. Important to have a planned harvest that will provide ripe items every week. I think that would be the daunting part. Having the variety of things every week that I see my friends share.
I've always wondered if a CSA could exist without kale & lettuce? Everything else seems to have a set harvest time, so how do you provide a little every week or two over the course of a year?
You probably also have to be located reasonabley near a large populartion of urban, partially educated, liberal Moms who have been led to believe ag chemicals and GMO are somehow unhealthy.
Community Supported Agriculture--- consumers buy a share/membership and then are entitled to a shopping bag of whatever produce the farmer sees fit to provide on some pre-determined schedule (weekly/bi- weekly/monthly).
If the farm is in the south with its longer growing season, that may work out well. But for us of more northern latitudes where the growing season is only 3- 5 months the varierty is severly liimited.
That's why I made the comment about kale & lettuce-- those foods represented by the foliage of the plant can be harvested more or less contiuously. Of course, those are of very poor nutritional density.
The nutritionally superior crops involve fruits & roots which usually are harvested only once a year over a very short time span. Staggered planting dates can help extend that a little, but not enough, IMO, to make a membership worth it... unless you're willing to eat the way we did prior to the 60s-- You only get produce that's "in season." The sort of folks who who wouold be proine to buy into a CSA are probably too spoiled to do that for very long.
I wonder how many CSA members renew their memberships for a second time?
Well, we're fairly northern and not known for our long growing season here in Western WA and the friends I have who buy CSA groceries every week do it every year. One former client is on the selling side and does good business!
I don't buy it because it's all the kind of vegetables my mother always tried to get me to eat and couldn't. It IS a lot of lettuce and kale... but people who buy this kind of thing like that. And carrots. I think you can plant rows of carrots and other root vegetables every week to have a staggered harvest. And potatoes. Late summer is more fun, when tomatoes and melons and apples come ripe.
The sort of folks who who wouold be proine to buy into a CSA are probably too spoiled to do that for very long.
The sort of folks I know who buy CSA:
I don't think CSA buyers are spoiled city people necessarily. I am from a small town and many of the buyers are other small farmers who have livestock they raise and sell too, or eggs. Or to supplement their own garden produce. You have to go pick up the box and the farms are rural and pretty rustic so I don't think they're getting a lot of customers from the big city. It's people down the road.
One who values anything organic and vegetable. She also buys and has a box from ImperfectFoods.com delivered every week. She loves weird vegetables no one has ever heard of. I wouldn't go to her house for dinner But she loves the stuff.
Two others who just like to support small local businesses.
Last edited by Diana Holbrook; 01-27-2022 at 10:00 AM..
I wish I could help, but the CSA was disbanded 102 years before I was born so I don't have any experience with it whatsoever. Sorry!
LOL that was my first thought!!!
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But she loves the stuff. 
