Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) aims to link you with your food, the farmers who grow and produce your food, and the land on which it is grown. Originating in Japan, CSAs are called teikei: food with the farmer’s face on it.
With CSAs, typically you become a member of a single farm’s CSA by paying in advance for a season’s worth of vegetables grown on that one farm. Receiving payments in advance enables the farmer to finance the farm’s production without a loan. As partners in the endeavor you share in the risk and the bounty with the farmers. This means that sometimes you’ll receive more or less than you expected of certain items in your box, depending on growing conditions. CSAs are becoming popular all around the world in response to people’s desires to know where their food is coming from and that it is safe. We hold these issues very high and strive to provide the best tasting, safest, and healthy food possible. Read more about the general CSA concept on the Local Harvest website.
At New Family Farm, we like to be on the cutting edge. Because of that, we are approaching our “CSA” a little differently: we operate Prudent Produce to provide #GoodFoodDelivered — weekly deliveries of good food that you want to eat every week throughout the year. Whether we call this a CSA or a FoodBox or… our desire to connect people with good food remains the same.
The first source of food will be that which is grown on our own farm – following conscious growing practices. If we do not grow it, we try to source things from other local farms. If not available from other local farms, then we will look regionally, and if necessary, nationally. We think it is most important that you are getting good food that you and your family will eat. If it is local and seasonal, that is best! But we understand that it isn’t always possible to get nice, big bell peppers locally year-round – so New Family Farm will grow them for you when we can, and Prudent Produce will source them for the boxes when we can’t.
So – is this really a CSA? Not in the traditional sense. We’re ok with that. Like we said – we believe in taking the best of what works from a variety of perspectives, and piecing good things together to make something better.
Have questions? Ask! Have ideas? Share! This is our first shot at this – and we are figuring it out as we go.