What is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)?
What should I expect?
What will I receive from the harvest?
What are the benefits of joining the Red Wagon CSA?
Do I need to wash my vegetables?
What happens if I don’t pick up my share?
What forms of payment do you accept?
How secure is my Electronic Check payment?
Do you offer a payment plan?
Can I get a half share or split a share?
How many people will a share feed? Will a share provide all of my vegetables for the week?
Will I get large quantities of vegetables to pickle or can?
What is Sharing the Harvest?
Additional questions?
What is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)?
The original CSAs started when members of a community partnered with a farmer. The members share in the risks of the farm by pre-paying for a share of what the farm produces. The farmer benefits by having money to pay for up-front expenses such as seeds, equipment, and labor. The crops are then harvested and divided among the CSA members.
Many CSAs are now a modified form of the original CSAs. The farmer still sells shares, but does not sell all of what the farm produces to CSA members. Red Wagon will sell about 40% of what we produce to our CSA members. There is still some risk to the members, but we should be able to fulfill our commitment because only a portion of our annual production will be used for the CSA obligation. It would take a catastrophic event to prevent us from meeting our obligation.
What should I expect?
CSA members should have a desire to eat and prepare foods they may not be accustomed to and also to change what they eat with the changing seasons. Eating seasonally can be a challenge, but can also provide incredible variety over the course of the year. Wilted greens sauteed with garlic become a staple of the CSA as do many various and wonderful salads. We will provide you with some recipes and we also encourage you to share your favorite recipes with us and other CSA members.
What will I receive from the harvest?
We have an incredible diversity of produce at Red Wagon. Each season we grow over 100 kinds of vegetables and herbs. The season starts with cool weather crops such as greens, turnips, onions, and peas. Diversity gradually increases throughout the summer, reaching its peak in August and September when we harvest around 25 different crops per week! We work hard to provide crops like beans, tomatoes, and melons that are easy to use and familiar to everyone. Our goal is to find a balance between diversity and familiar foods that make people happy.
What are the benefits of joining the Red Wagon CSA?
When you join our CSA you will know who is growing your food (us!) and where it is coming from (our farms on Valmont Road and on N 63rd Street in Boulder County). Each week you will receive the freshest produce straight from our fields. You will be strengthening our local food system and helping to ensure the survival of local agriculture. You will also have the opportunity to become more involved with your community. You will be connected with a local farm and other CSA members who share some of your same values.
We will also get the opportunity to be connected to CSA members who understand the importance of local agriculture and who want to take an active part in protecting it. Your membership will pay for seeds, labor, and equipment in the beginning of the season when expenses are high and income is low. We will send you a weekly newsletter with an update of what is happening on the farm as well as some recipes to use for that week’s share. You will also be invited out to the farm for two tours to be able to better understand how a small farm works. And also just to enjoy the beauty of the farm!
Do I need to wash my vegetables?
We rinse your vegetables at the farm, so they are generally free of soil and grit. But you should wash your vegetables at home before your prepare them.
What happens if I don’t pick up my share?
If you are not able to make it to the pickup, you can have a friend pick up your share for you. You do not need to let us know that you are having somebody else pick up your share for you-they just need to give us your name at the pickup. Any shares that are not picked up will be donated.
What forms of payment do you accept?
CSA payments must be made by electronic check or regular check. We do not take credit cards due to the additional fee to the farm.
How secure is my Electronic Check payment?
We use Farmigo for our online CSA signup. Farmigo works with payment gateways that are PCI compliant (i.e. Check Gateway in the case of electronic checks). Farmigo creates a secure communication channel with Check Gateway to ensure that the bank information that is relayed to Check Gateway is done so in a secure fashion. Farmigo does NOT store any of your bank information on their servers. Instead Farmigo uses Check Gateway to store the information since they have invested a lot of resources to ensure they uphold the very stringent PCI requirements.
Do you offer a payment plan?
It is very helpful for us to have payment in full at the time you submit your application. However, if you are not able to pay for your CSA share all at once you can use one of our payment plans.
You can divide your total amount due into multiple payments. The first payment is due at sign up. The subsequent payment(s) are due monthly after the first payment.
If none of these payment methods work for you, you may contact us to try to work out another plan.
Can I get a half share or split a share?
If you think a regular share will be too much food for you, we recommend getting the Biweekly Share. It is possible that you might miss out on one or two crops, but we will do our best to make sure you get to try everything. And almost all of our produce will last for at least 10 days (if not much longer), so a share from one week should stay fresh until it is time to pick your next share in two weeks.
You can also split a share with a friend, but that will be up to you to decide how you want to split up your share. And we have gotten feedback that it really does not work to split a share 3-ways. It is too difficult to split up things like melons, winter squash, etc.
The Large Veggie Share is meant for a family. We do not recommend splitting it between a group of individuals.
How many people will a share feed? Will a share provide all of my vegetables for the week?
It is really difficult to say how many people a share will feed. Some people say it is too much food for their family and others say that it is not enough. It really depends upon how many vegetables you eat. You can look at what we had in our regular and large shares last season to give you a better idea of how much food you will receive.
See last seasons Veggie Share and Fruit Share.
The CSA share will likely not provide all your vegetables for the week. A regular share will get 5 to 7 different kinds of vegetables each week. You will probably need to supplement certain other vegetable ingredients to make your favorite recipes.
Will I get large quantities of vegetables to pickle or can?
You will not get a large quantity of any one vegetable in a given week. Our CSA is meant to provide you with vegetables you will eat that week, not to give you large quantities of food to preserve.
What is Sharing the Harvest?
Red Wagon will make reduced-rate CSA shares available to needy households in our community. You can contribute towards one of these shares in any amount. You can contact us at SharingTheHarvest@redwagonorganicfarm.com if you or someone you know might qualify for one of these reduced-rate shares. In 2015 we collected $1,288 and were able to offer reduced-price shares to 4 families! A contribution of just a few dollars can go a long way towards helping families in our community.
Additional questions?
Email us at csa@redwagonorganicfarm.com.
Red Wagon Farm 