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Announcing Riverhill Farm CSA Subscription Shares for 2008!
• To subscribe now you may go directly to sign up, but please read on.
• Please pass the word. As a small business, we rely on word-of-mouth. Feel free to forward this link to others who might be interested in our CSA or in learning more about Riverhill Farm.
Dear Friends,
Heartfelt greetings to all of you! We're in the midst of planning and preparing for the coming season and invite you to join us this year as a shareholder in our farm's CSA offering.
We were very encouraged by our experience of Riverhill's CSA last year. I suffered a good deal during the weeks leading up to our first shareholder pickup, and even postponed the pickup date by ten days to allow us to have more to offer in our first box. In hindsight it was probably just a case of extreme stage fright on my part. Once we got going, we hardly looked back. Your boxes were full to the point of overflowing and we were able to add a new variety of produce nearly every week until the season crescendo-ed into a veritable weekly avalanche of produce. We were also able to include delicious strawberries from time to time and a steady stream of melons and watermelons. We plan to do the same, and more, this year.
We'll also offer a few changes and a few additions to the mix. One of the experiences we valued the most last year was getting to know all of you while you were here at the farm and having the opportunity to talk with you, answer questions about the farm and what was in your boxes, and offer you choices that wouldn't be possible if we were pre-packing your boxes and transporting them to a pick-up location in town. Also, we were gladdened to find that most of you found the experience of being at the farm to be such a rewarding part of participating in the CSA, getting to watch the season unfold and feeling, as we do on a daily basis, the intense beauty of this farm. As you know, one of the reasons I farm is because I love this landscape, and believe that it must be preserved as a farm for the benefit of our community at almost any cost. To believe in the importance of a place, you have to experience it directly.
One part of making that belief possible is ensuring that this farm is economically viable and can support a farm family. As I've learned, that's not necessarily easy, and requires a great deal of thought and an even greater amount of work. I'm not afraid of either, but it also requires a great deal of support from the community. Towards that end, we're going to increase the number of shares we offer to the community this season. What we don't want to lose in the process, however, is the opportunity for us to have some form of meaningful interaction with you and to give you what you want while you are here picking up your box for the week, nor do we want you to lose the opportunity to experience the quiet and depth this place has to offer.
So, we're going to add an extra day for you to choose from for picking up your produce for the week. This will allow us to increase the number of sharers without making things too hectic or having too many people here at once. We hope that preserves a sense of gracefulness for all of us. To facilitate this, please designate a first and second choice, if possible, when you select your day of the week for pickup. We will endeavor to give everyone their first choice, and we thank you for your flexibility if that's at all possible for you.
Locally Raised Meat – Your Choice as an Addition
This year we are also in the process of figuring out the details of an add-on of locally raised meat to the regular CSA of produce. You can choose to add it on to your produce share; you are not obligated to do so. We are motivated to offer this by a number of factors. For those of you who eat meat, we would like to increase your convenient access to locally produced, grass-fed and naturally raised meat. There are a number of very committed and skilled, USDA certified producers in the region and we would like to support their efforts to make a living doing what they do and help them stay in business. We hope it will also reduce your need to make a separate trip to the grocery store and meet more of your needs from local farms.
As it stands right now, we will offer meat shares for the same duration as our produce shares, with alternating weeks of grass-fed beef, grass-fed lamb, and naturally raised pork. Riverhill Farm will not receive any money as part of this transaction; we are simply trying to support local producers and your access to their product. When the details are finalized and if you indicate your interest, you will pay these producers directly. If you elect to pay for a meat share, you will pick up your meat at Riverhill Farm when you come to get your box. In all likelihood, you will have the option of choosing a single meal's worth of meat or two meal's worth per week. You may also be able to place special orders directly to the producers and pick up those products while you pick up your produce. Because of issues related to what is available from a single producer on any given week, the cuts of meat will vary from week to week and not everyone will receive the same cut each week, but everyone will have received the same quantity and quality by the conclusion of the season. At this time we want to identify the amount of interest so please do let us know by checking the appropriate box on the subscription form so that we can get an initial headcount. Of course, this does not obligate you to pay if you later choose not to participate in the meat add-on.
Bouquets of Flowers
We are also trying to assess your interest in receiving bouquets of flowers on a regular basis when you come to pick up your produce shares. Many of you received flowers last year and know that Maggie, Jo's daughter, makes a very attractive arrangement. This season, her arrangements will be available on a first-come, first-served, pay per bouquet basis for a price between $8.00 and $10.00. To plan the quantity we will grow and order an appropriate amount of seed, we need to know the level of interest now. Again, please indicate your interest on the subscription form.
We may also be able to periodically offer organically grown tree fruit, such as peaches, for your purchase at the farm. Stay tuned!
What is a CSA?
Okay, for those of you who may be new to Community Supported Agriculture, a few words may be in order about how this works. There are many other aspects to CSA as a method of producing and selling agricultural crops, but offering subscriptions for annual seasonal shares of produce has been widely practiced in Europe and Japan, and in the past decade has grown in popularity across the US as a measure to help sustain local, small family farms. It is now very common for some urban areas and rural areas to have several CSA farms offering seasonal produce to the residents of the area.
In a nutshell, Riverhill Farm's CSA will provide you, the subscriber, with fresh, organic and locally grown produce and the subscriber directly supports the farm by providing the farm with a predictable income. The subscriber benefits by intimate knowledge of their food source and through a connection to the natural cycles of our local environment. The subscriber and the community as a whole benefit by keeping land in agriculture in our community and by supporting a local economy.
One of the features of the way we produce our crops is that most of the seasonal costs we incur are incurred during the months between February and June as we buy seed, soil amendments, irrigation equipment, new farm equipment and so on. These happen to be winter months during which there is no income on the farm. Gauging demand is not easy for any farm, and knowing how much to produce of one thing or another can at times be a guessing game. Many a farmer has gambled at his or her peril and found that there is a smaller market for the product that has been grown or the price offered during the summer does not support a profit.
Riverhill's CSA lets us plan based on our income what our production should be, gives us seasonal working capital with which to buy materials for the season, and provides us with a predictable market for the products we grow. And, ideally, participation fosters community in the biggest sense of the term for all involved. We hope that participation in our CSA will encourage many of you to develop a more intimate relationship with Riverhill Farm through the opportunity to see it often as the season develops, and to share with us our fascination for all of what Riverhill Farm is and will develop into in the coming years.
The A(rugula) to Z(ucchini) of Riverhill Farm CSA
Joining Riverhill Farm as a subscriber will provide you with a weekly box of seasonal vegetables, starting with peas, greens, lettuce, salad mix and other salad crops in the early season and quickly including maincrop vegetables-corn, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, beans, carrots, culinary herbs, eggplant, onions, leeks and garlic, summer and winter squash, pumpkins and much more. We will also provide you with delicious strawberries, vine-ripened melons and watermelons.
Starting in early June, we will offer the choice of pickup on one of three days a week-Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays-for subscribers to come to the farm to pick up their boxes of fresh produce. This season we are offering subscription shares for seventeen weeks, from June 10th through the week of September 29th. As long as we have space available and a reasonable balance in numbers picking up on all three days, you can choose which day you want. To help achieve this and if at all possible, please designate an alternate day on the subscription form so that we can have a good balance on all three days.
You get an in-season choice of produce that reflects what's best that week. You'll get standards, staples and, ideally, something exciting that may be familiar or unfamiliar to you-some specialty Italian greens for example, or vine-ripened melons-and recipes to help you if you find that challenging. We pre-pick as much of the produce as we can, depending on its durability, and arrange it like we would for a Farmers' Market table. For some produce, there are limits to the quantity available each week (usually labor intensive crops like green beans or potatoes), and for other produce it's free choice (you can choose not to take something if you don't want it). We will help you pack your box while you are here and tell you what we especially like, or talk about some great recipe that we or another subscriber uses.
For perishable crops like salad mix and heads of lettuce, or other specialty greens, we'll usually pick them ahead of time in small quantities for your box, or even while you wait to ensure that you get the freshest possible produce.
A Standard Share Feeds Two to Four People
Although some of our CSA subscribers would disagree and tell you we give way more than we tell you we will, a standard share will feed two to four people their typical weekly vegetable consumption. We are not offering half-shares or large shares this season. However, we encourage those wanting half-shares to subscribe with a friend and share the box each week or alternate weeks. If you cannot find someone to share with, contact us, and we may be able to pair you with someone.
The standard share is available for $25.00 weekly, a seventeen-week season total of $425. Sending in your deposit of half the season total ($212.50) reserves your subscription for the coming season. The balance of your payment is due the day you come to pick up your first box. There are a limited number of subscriptions this season, so send in your check promptly to reserve your share.
The variety and quantity will begin to peak in late July-early August, with supply continuing through the end of September. At the end of September, the days are shorter and temperatures cool and it is time for us to prepare our fields for cover cropping for the winter.
In addition to contributing directly to the economic viability of Riverhill Farm, your subscription to our CSA also supports many elements of the farm which are part of our environmental stewardship of this beautiful place. We have received grant money to revegetate the riparian areas of the farm, naturalizing them for the advantage of birds and beneficial insects and enhancing the nutrient and sediment catching properties of these areas on the farm to ensure that the farm's operations do not detrimentally impact waterways downstream from our farm. We will be planting perennial and annual hedgerows and field borders throughout the farm to provide seasonal and permanent habitat. We will continue to offer opportunities to local schools to bring their students to a working farm and the natural environment that is Riverhill Farm. And, we hope to begin the process of obtaining a conservation easement on the land to ensure its long-term viability as a farm and as open space for this community.
As a part of our commitment to community, we like to include our newsletters in your box to communicate about some of the big picture issues we think about while we are out in the fields. This is a regular feature of our share boxes, and you can also expect to get recipes and other information included in your box.
Come, join us in our own small effort to sustain this wonderful community we all call home!
Alan Haight and Jo McProud
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