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market-farming - Re: Launching a CSA

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  • From: Chris Sawyer <css AT ioa.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Launching a CSA
  • Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 07:23:28 -0500


HI,
This is our third year of CSA operation. We never felt ok about asking
for all that money up front, and use a monthly subscription. Our
customers are on the honor system to account for their money. Last year
we tracked all the money and all the time and found that our CSA was
taking 30% of our time for 10% of our time. We stopped delivery, even to
pick up points. All members have to come to the farm and pack and find
their own stuff. After all this is about helping out the farmer. In
exchange they get what they want, and only what they want. I no longer
track diets, you would be surprised how many special requests you get.
All our neighboring CSA farmers say they make no exceptions and every
box is the same. We lost three of our 30 customers last year because we
gave them too much food. I have friends who are servicing 100 member
CSAs and do pick up but it is because it is an hour from town to the
farm. We are 15 minutes from downtown and in the middle of a suburb (if
you will) of Asheville. Last year there were only three farms in the two
county area to choose from, this year there are 15. As you may or may
not know it has been increasingly hard to make ends meet from wholesale
or broker sales from the farm. If I had a lot of land it would be
different, I could actually compete with California, I only have four
acres. We sell mostly wholesale, do two tailgate markets a week, and
have a very small CSA. No advertising, just coasting from the last two
years work and we have the help of the web. Most of our folks did make
the first connection using the web. Search out and list your farm on
every available site. If you do a search in google using the
'site:www.jakesfarm.com' format you will find out how many sites are
linked to jakesfarm. I have not listed the farm for the past two years
on any new sites and there are many more I need to get on, but with only
those few, we get significant action.
I don't try to grow everything a family needs in the produce line, our
members still have to shop, but what they get from us only really costs
them half the wholesale price when all is said and done. If you would
like to check out wholesale prices, see the availability list on
www.carolinaorganicgrowers.com. That list is updated every Sunday night.
It will tell you which farm is harvesting what. I only try to grow three
or four crops for the wholesale market, but our co-op is short of stuff
a lot, so we wind up supporting it and letting them have way more than
we plan to in our planning stages in the winter. We have had torrential
rain I can't get to pick the beans which are heavy with food right now,
much less keep the bean beetle under control as I would like.
Check out the Robin van Enter center or site. They have the latest and
best instruction for starting a CSA. Each market seems to be like a
micro climate. Here we had to do lots of education about the program for
the locals, but the transplanted people already had knowledge and were
seeking us instead of the other way around. I think we don't have any
locals at this time. Most of their diets are 'southern' and organic
gourmet vegetable that need little cooking don't appeal to them anyway.
I think starting up, it is important to put yourself in the shoes of
your intended target market. Are you after four people families, both
parents working....put flyers in the schools close to you and solicit
the teachers....Single folks in our group are accommodated, but other
CSA will not do half shares and required them to find another on their
own to share with, because as I said before, practicing the no exception
rule and setting firm ground rules from the start is important.

Chris
www.jakesfarm.com





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