What is CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)?

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) reconnects people with the farms producing their food. Members pay for a vegetable subscription before the growing season to help meet the farm’s early season expenses. Being a farm member means becoming a “farming partner”, sharing the risks as well as the bounty of the season.  Members receive a variety of produce grown throughout the season with no guarantee to the exact amount of vegetables delivered due to seasonal growing fluctuations.   Suncrest Gardens pledges to do its best to provide an abundant assortment of produce and incorporate several growing techniques to protect members from weather-related shortfalls within its means.

CSA members receive weekly or biweekly boxes of fresh, locally grown vegetables produced during the season. Weekly newsletters share stories about the farm, the farm family, and provide culinary tips and recipe suggestions for utilizing your produce. Create one-stop shopping by adding other farm goods to your delivery!

If you love to eat, appreciate freshness and flavor, value local farming, and are willing to explore a different way to think about your food, join Suncrest Gardens Farm for a CSA subscription season!

Advantages for farmers:

• Get to spend time marketing the food early in the year, before long field production days begin
• Receive payment early in the season, which helps with the farm’s cash flow
• Have an opportunity to get to know the people who eat the food they grow

Advantages for consumers:

• Eat ultra-fresh food, with all the flavor and vitamin benefits
• Get exposed to new vegetables and new ways of cooking
• Learn to embrace seasonal eating
• You can come visit your farm where your food is grown
• Find that kids typically favor food from “their” farm – even veggies they’ve never been known to eat
• Develop a relationship with the farmer who grows their food and learn more about how food is grown

CSA By Season

Begin in May with asparagus, tender early greens, radishes, green onions, and herbs. Then take a journey through the seasons as color and variety emerge and blossom. Enjoy the fruits of the summer garden with a variety of fresh salad and spinach greens, squash, cucumbers, green beans, broccoli, cabbage, tomatoes, sweet peppers, eggplant, sweet corn, cooking greens such as kale and chard, onions, garlic, and an array of root crops such as carrots, turnips, potatoes, and beets. Walk through fall with a surprising variety of storage root crops and hardy greens, fresh salad, winter squash, broccoli, brussel sprouts, and spinach. Settle into winter with already preserved comfort foods derived from our frozen vegetables and fruits, conveniently frozen made-from-scratch vegetarian based soups and soup stocks, and a steady supply of hardy root crops such as carrots, potatoes, and beets. Take a break in April for spring cleaning and prepare for fresh garden goodies again in May.

Choose which season our CSA vegetable subscriptions work for you or become a year-round local foods eater with Suncrest Gardens!

CSA Member Benefits

Vegetable shares vary in size and variety depending on the season, providing an assortment of the season’s best vegetables for your eating pleasure. A focus is placed on staple vegetables with a sampling of other less familiar veggies.

Optional shares to add into your farm box for your convenience include eggs, herbs, and extra salad. Chickens may be ordered, but require on-farm pick-up.

The peak season Summer CSA subscription season begins in mid-June and runs through September, offering 14 weeks of local farm produce. Extend your season of eating with Spring, Fall, and Winter CSA shares and choose to purchase Suncrest Gardens pasture-raised meats to round out your plate.

Weekly newsletters provide tasty recipes, farm news, nutritional facts, and sustainable agriculture information.

Pick-up sites include Winona, Fountain City, Alma, and Suncrest Gardens Farm in rural Cochrane. Off farm delivery day is Wednesday afternoon, usually between 4-6pm.

Members are invited to come out and enjoy the farm.  Feedback helps guide seed selection and share sizing.

Work shifts are available for a rebate on your share price.  Full season internships are also available.  Email/call Heather for details.