It is National CSA Week, so I thought I this would be a great opportunity to talk a bit about what CSA’s are and why they are so important for the farming community!

For those who may not be familiar with the term, CSA stands for community-supported agriculture, and it is a system where consumers pay farmers upfront for a share of the crops they grow. Often times CSAs are associated with produce, but many meat, dairy, and flower farmers also offer CSAs. Generally a farmer will offer a certain number of shares and consumers can choose how many shares they want during the season. These shares are sold in the months prior to harvest, which allows farmers to market and make sales in the off-season. Offering CSAs also generates revenue at a time when farmers are needing to buy seeds, supplies, and equipment to prepare for the next season. This is also a great way to support the local economy and environment by purchasing directly from farmer’s where you live.

CSAs are also a way that consumers can support farmer’s by helping minimize the risks associated with farming and poor crop production. For our farm that might mean that if the deer got into the sunflowers and ate our harvest for the week, but we have lots of zinnias, we can incorporate extra zinnias into our bouquets that week to make up for the lost sunflowers instead of trying to scramble to figure out what to do with the extra zinnias and make up for lost revenue from the loss of our sunflowers. CSA share are farmer’s choice, which means you get a new selection of items in your share each week based on what is ready to harvest, as opposed to picking our all the individual items yourself. This is also a great way to discover new things and get in touch with the seasonality of food (or flowers!).

Lots of farms offer their own CSA, and each have it set up a bit differently to fit how they run their business. For our farm, we offer a weekly or bi-weekly bouquet subscription during the summer. Each bouquet includes an assortment of seasonal blooms, all grown by us. The exact flowers that you find in your bouquet will vary from week to week based on what is blooming at the farm. We open up our CSA Subscriptions over the winter and begin delivering bouquets in June.⁠
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CSA's are a great way to get fresh local produce, meat, and flowers, all while supporting local family farms.⁠

Flower CSA's