Why Join a CSA

Effective and rewarding, CSAs focus on the farmer-member relationship as much as the food they produce. There is something rewarding knowing that the choices you are making are directly supporting a farmer and their local business. 

Joining a CSA means that you are committing to stay with the farmer throughout the whole season, sharing the risks and rewards of the farm that year. CSA members’ motivation for supporting the farm is just as much about supporting farming practices that match their values as it is about getting the full financial value of their share. Your support is what helps to make your local food producers resilient, and sustainable farming possible. 

We don’t take this support lightly, so our goal is to cultivate a connection with our members, adapt to feedback, and make sure our members are getting as much as they can out of this partnership.

Tasteless, uninspiring tomatoes in the winter... We probably all know this frustration well.

One of the best parts of CSA is learning when each vegetable is at its prime and then eating a LOT of it! Because taste matters; putting together a great meal isn't just about skill, it starts with quality ingredients, which almost always starts with eating seasonally. 

A great quality of CSA members is that they love food. If you really love cooking and value taste, then you'll probably love being in a CSA. CSAs are all about providing high-quality vegetables that make those 20 minute weeknight meals feel like a night out. You're paying for that taste experience when you join a CSA.

CSA is a different way of experiencing and interacting with your food than most people are used to. It will take some time to get used to the system and to use all the items in your share. You may waste some food at the beginning — if you are new to this model, we encourage you to be patient with yourself if you need a few weeks to adapt!

Join with an adventurous spirit and don't be too hard on yourself for not eating the whole box every week at first. Sometimes you'll be a super-chef and maximize that week's share and sometimes you'll work your way through the carrots by dipping them in ranch. Neither way is 'better' or 'worse', it just takes time to develop new habits and skills. It may take a few seasons to feel like you've got it down.

We'll be here throughout the process with recipes, tips, and tricks to help you out!

One big thing that CSA members learn is to be flexible with their menu and meal planning. We try to give members a list of what will be in the share a few days in advance and allow customization, but farming always comes with unexpected turns and surprises. 

If you have a strict meal plan for medical reasons, a super tight schedule, or other unavoidable reasons, then supporting a farmers market or local grocery store might be a more sustainable option for you, but we’d also encourage you to check out our spend-down share option (available only during the summer and fall), which lets you fully customize your share each week (or even skip it!). 

CSA works best for people who see their kitchen as a creative space and who are able to pivot when needed and handle the spontaneity required to experiment with new ingredients. We do our best to support you in this creativity by sharing recipe inspiration in our newsletter, our blog, and on our recipe page.

Joining a CSA will push your boundaries to try new vegetables and explore variety in your kitchen. You will find new vegetables that you absolutely love and you may find some that you don't, yet! Part of the CSA experience is getting exposure to a wide range of vegetable varieties and types and finding ways to enjoy them. 

It's all part of the CSA goal of developing food diversity and teaching our communities how to eat seasonally again. If you want to grow in the kitchen, you'll have to push yourself to try new ingredients. We'll be there to help along the way!

If the idea of trying new foods every week is something you need to warm up to, check out our spend-down share option (available only during the summer and fall), which lets you fully customize or skip your share each week.

This is a really key point. It is absolutely understandable to ask "How much does this cost?" and weigh the pros and cons. Supporting a CSA financially, however, is not just about doing a cost analysis of each vegetable you receive and comparing it to what you'd pay at the grocery store. 

Our vegetables have added value because they are produced in a way that supports the people, land, and living things that make it possible for us to nourish ourselves. It costs more for a small farm like ours to pay our staff a living wage and care for the land by using cover crops and natural, non-synthetic fertilizers and pesticides than it does for a large, subsidized factory farm to produce a far inferior product while applying chemical fertilizers and herbicides that enter the community through runoff and paying their workers less than they deserve. Any increase in prices at One Acre Farm directly results in an increase in staff wages. 

CSA members appreciate this added value of our food and are willing to pay for it. In return, we are happy to offer flexible payment options to make access to our CSA as accessible as we can.