How our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Works:
We take members vegetable preferences and local growing conditions into consideration and plant a CSA Garden each year which we believe will deliver at least 6-12 different types of items to each member for each week of the delivery season. (In 2008 we are planning for 50 members for 20 weeks).
We sell the memberships in advance, this allows us to purchase seed and other items without having to take out bank loans (bank loans are the way traditional farmers get into dept and often loose the farm!). Yes, the members are taking on some of the “risk” of growing, like weather and pest issues, which can lead to crop failures, but that is part of what it means to be a Community Supporting Agriculture. We share the aboundance of large harvests (like Bok Choy & Beets in ’07) and we also share the risks (’07 was declaired an Agricultural Disaster in TN and we didn’t have as many green beans or squash as we’d hoped, but our members still got some of both!) Click the tab at the top of the page to See What Members Got in 2007.
We harvest the fresh ripe food each week, rinse, and divide it, then lovingly pack it into equal boxes for each member.
Members pick up their weekly subscription box at a convenient location the same evening each week.
2008 Pick Up Sites will be:
Sewanee - Tue 5-7pm central
Chattanooga (North) - Wed 5-7pm eastern
Chattanooga (Lee Hwy) - Wed 5-7 pm eastern
McMinnville – tba. 5-7pm central
Dunlap – Thurs 5-7pm central
Soddy-Daisy - Thurs 5-7pm eastern
No Member Farm Work Required! (some CSA’s require members to work in the fields as well as pay cash) We know people have busy lives including work, family and time to be good citizens doing charitable work formally or informally, so we do the growing and let our members “Do Good; Eat Healthy, Enjoy!”.
Future:
We like to think that small scale Sustainable Farms like ours ARE the future.
In 2008 we plan to offer 50 Member Subscriptions. We are working to create rainwater catchment ponds across the farm to provide irrigation water during drought conditions; this is part of our path to Sustainability. We are also adding berry bushes and more mushroom logs to increase the variety of what we have in future years for CSA boxes!
Our eventual goal is to grow for a Community of 100 Members. That is it; we don’t intend to grow any larger than 100 Members. We intend to reach a sustainable size and to keep nurturing our land and the community of people and wildlife that depend on it. We’ll add more fruit (berries and trees) and keep trying rare old varieties as we find them. Sustainable isn’t stagnant, but the growth is in quality, varieity, techniques, not size of farm/dollars.
Our growing methods include:
soil enriching practices like COMPOST and RABBIT MANURE (not synthetic/toxic chemicals)
Natural Insect Control – Good Bugs & Birds eat the “bad bugs”, we also hand pick bad bugs & their eggs, and sometimes rip out a crop if it becomes over populated w/ bad bugs, we also use row covers and trap crops to keep the bad bugs from dining on our food, and yes, some of our produce will have what might look like blemishes, but we think of them as an independent verification that we do NOT poison the food, so view them as “inspected by live bugs mark of Naturally Grown Produce”!
Natural Habitat Areas --Approximately 10 of our 30 acres remains a wooded forest area which allows habitat for all sorts of wildlife, we even are regularly visited by a little black bear! Allowing such wildlife areas promotes a balance between human activities like farming, and the rest of the natural world (trees, Red Tailed Hawks who nest and raise a baby in our woods each year, frogs, and all sorts of other native species). Community Supported Agriculture, done right, supports the local wildlife as part of the community too!
