Distributing Your CSA Crops
Shared From MOTHER EARTH NEWS Written By: Sarah Milstein
Distribution Site and Managers
If you’re delivering shares off-farm, you’ll need a reliable site. Members in the delivery community should be able to help find a site and sometimes will offer a garage, porch, or yard. If that is not feasible, churches and community centers are often receptive to housing a weekly distribution. Look for a good-sized room, garage, courtyard, or other area that is accessible to a truck, can get a little muddy, and can be used for about five hours each week. Indoor or covered space u nice but not necessary, as vegetables don’t mind getting wet.
If your distribution is on-farm, you may ,wish to designate an area of the barn or of another outbuilding that is safe for children and won’t create a nuisance for you.
Some growers deliver their produce in already bagged or boxed shares. Prepackaging is a lot of work for you, :cough, and so unless you’ve got a particular reason for doing it, setting produce out in bulk may be easier. Also, many members like digging their hands into the crates–it echoes in a small way your experience of the harvest. The bulk distribution (ask members to bring their own bags) also allows members some :election and it tends to lead to a good deal of socializing at the site, a priority for some groups. A bulk distribution usually involves a chalkboard with a list written out every week, telling members how much of each vegetable to take. With a bulk distribution, you will almost certainly need a site manager.
Most likely, whether the distribution is on your land or not, you’ll have time to drop off the goods, but won’t be able to stick around for three or four hours to make sure every family gets its share. A site manager is a non-farmer who fills this role. Further, many CSA groups require that members put in a few hours every year in helping at the site.
Sam and Elizabeth Smith of Caretaker Farm in Williamstown, Massachusetts, ask their 185 members to volunteer for a few hours over the course of each season at their barn-based distribution. “The distribution is pretty straightforward, but there’s always something new each week and it’s good to have a person overseeing things,” explains Sam.
Debby and Peter Kavako’s daughter, Brenna, packs organic lettuce for CSA delivery,
Surplus Distribution
At the end of each distribution, you will have leftover vegetables (from people who did not pick up all or part of their share). The bigger your membership, the more surplus you will have, but count on at least 10% leftover every week. Many farms donate this surplus to a food pantry or soup kitchen that is near the distribution site, and some give the extras directly to needy families that they know.
Some growers plan on delivering overage specifically to people with little or no income, who may not be able to afford the fresh, high-quality produce that everyone needs. The Food Bank Farm in Hadley, Massachusetts, grows about half of its produce for the needy.
If you are working with a church group or other community center, you may be able to barter your surplus for use of its site.
Quail Hill Community Farm members at the stand.
A Pricing System
There are as many ways of deriving a share price as there are CSA groups. One method is to determine your overall growing costs, then divide that by the number of shares you’re going to grow (or, if your operation has several market outlets, decide on the percentage of your budget the CSA will cover and divide that by the number of shares). Another way is to estimate a dollar amount you are going to deliver each week, based on your farm stand or farmers’ market prices.
How do you explain your share price to members? While you need not provide a detailed accounting of your expenses, members stand to learn a good deal about the costs of growing, selling, and distributing food, and the better educated your members are, the more likely they will be to understand and support the farm during times of difficulty or growth. A simple pie chart (or a list of percentages) that gives a rough idea of how much of your budget is spent on each of several broad categories (like labor, land, inputs, capital expenses. trucking and administration), and a note of how much of the farm’s budget is covered by the CSA and by other sources. ought to suffice.
What if you have customers who do not have the resources to pay for food months before it is delivered, or even to pay for food at all? Many farms allow a few members to work off some or all of a share, either through farm labor or through administrative and distribution site work. You can also accept payments on a long-term installation plan, and you can offer a sliding-scale share fee. If members or organizations donate a share, you can offer a sort of scholarship. There is always a way to be compensated.
The most frequent comment experienced CSA growers make is, “Start small and grow slowly.” They also put a lot of emphasis on planning ahead. Since you’ll place your seed orders over the winter, January is not too early to begin recruiting members and testing interest in your target community.
Finally, whether you do it for profit or for other personal reasons, CSA should be fun and fulfilling. It’s not for everyone, but the model can be adapted to your specific needs. Let creativity guide you as you develop a group; you may be surprised by the results. Notes Debby Kavakos, “Four or five members are coming up from the city tomorrow to plant garlic with us. It’s amazing to me that people are going to take the time and expense to help out because they care about next year. That level of commitment has been very reassuring for us. It makes us step back sometimes and appreciate our farm and what we do.”
Several Slack Hollow interns and members haul in an impressive collection of squash (right) and carrot(left).
To continue reading about Sarah Milstein’s CSA experience, check out How to Start and Run a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Group on MOTHER EARTH NEWS.
