Behind The Scenes: CSA Edition

I think one of the reasons many folks enjoy our newsletter is that we go behind the scenes on certain aspects of our farm operation. One area we’ve never really gone behind the scenes on is our CSA Farm Share program. People have written entire books on Community Support Agriculture so it will be nigh impossible to condense that down into a digestible newsletter but this will get us started.

To put it succinctly: planning and executing a successful CSA program is extremely complicated. We’ll break it down into some easy to think about categories that will shed some light on the inner workings of our CSA.

I love the contrast here between the orange carrots and their green tops set against the charcoal colored soil.

Type of CSA Matters

Did you know there are tons of different types of CSAs? Everything from the traditional farmer choice CSA to our totally customizable CSA is possible. We chose a customizable CSA because we know that almost everyone has that one vegetable they just don’t care for. And even if you do like every vegetable you might get tired of a vegetable or have too much of it stocked up in your fridge. We want our CSA members to get the produce they want, need and like week after week to minimize the amount that goes unused.

Customization Needs Software

Running a totally customizable CSA, in our opinion, requires software to handle the logistics. Imagine taking 100 different orders every week, harvesting for the changing quantities of produce per CSA member requests, and packing 100 different shares every week while also juggling members vacations, missed share pickups, and all of the other things that come up during our busy lives. We decided that software could be the solution to all of this and we now use GrownBy for our CSA.

GrownBy handles all the ordering, label printing, and rescheduling things that come up during the season. All I have to do is put in an estimate of what I think we’ll have available, give our CSA members a day or two to customize their share, and then GrownBy prints out a list of what I need to harvest AND generates labels for us so we can pack 100 shares where no two are the same. On top of that, GrownBy offers the ability for you to change your pickup location and claim vacation days if you’re going to miss a pickup.

GrownBy is our trusty farmer-owned CSA Software.

Deciding What To Plant

I think this is a case where constant iteration has made what is a complex system into something very manageable. Through a combination of record keeping on harvest dates and totals, survey responses, and interaction with our CSA members we have a good feel for the crops people want and in what quantities. Couple that with building slowly starting with 8 CSA members back in 2015 (up to 100 now) we’ve been able to refine and iterate on our crop planting so we’re growing the crops our CSA members want.

Marketing Our CSA

This amounts to telling people about our CSA and how it can make their lives better. I’m not a salesperson by nature: I don’t feel comfortable being pushy, I’m honest, and I genuinely care that people feel like the CSA is valuable to their life. So when we talk about our CSA we talk about it in a way that highlights the positive ways our CSA has impact our CSA Members lives and we try to help potential new CSA members “self select” so that the new members we get have a high chance of enjoying the CSA.

The truth is that CSA is not for everyone. If you know that you don’t enjoy cooking at home and have no interest in learning how then a CSA share is probably not for you. If you’re gone regularly during the growing season on vacation and away from a kitchen then CSA probably isn’t for you. If you’re not willing to learn new recipes, cooking techniques or ways to prepare and eat vegetables then CSA is probably not for you.

Just a small sample of all the wonderful produce we grow.

A Sneak Peak into a CSA Week

Assuming all of the above goes well then we can jump into what the week of the CSA looks like from the farmers perspective. Early in the week (Monday or Tuesday) we do a visual assessment of our crops so we can make an estimate on what will be available for that weeks CSA. Once we have our estimate we add that information to our inventory list in GrownBy, our CSA software. Then, an email is sent out automatically to all CSA members reminding them that it’s time to customize their CSA share. Our CSA members use GrownBy to craft the perfect share before the share customization deadline.

Once the deadline hits we have a concrete list of exactly what we need to fill the CSA shares for that week. We then create a harvest list and head out to the field with our Farm Hands to bring in the harvest. This happens the day before you receive your CSA. Then, on CSA day we print out labels for all of our CSA members and setup our CSA packing station and get to work packing your shares. It’s a tight deadline: we pack all 100 CSA shares the morning of the delivery day but with the help of our Farm Hands and our CSA software we’re able to accomplish this with relative ease.

So there’s a little glimpse into the behind the scenes of our CSA. Is there something we missed or something you’d like to know more about? Drop us a line in the comments below or reach out!