Hello wonderful CSA members,
It was great to hear from so many of you in our annual end-of-season survey last year. We learned a lot and really appreciated the feedback we got from you all. We are committed to making the CSA experience the best it can possibly be for you, so I wanted to share a few of the updates for this 2023 season.
We have already been implementing an earlier pick-up time window here at One Acre Farm during the Winter CSA. We heard that the back roads around here don’t make for ideal driving at night so we are working hard to get those shares packed earlier so you can come pick up while it’s still light out.
Hearing lots of desire for more recipes and storage tips in the emails, we have started including more of those in our weekly CSA communications.
For those of you who might want a bit extra on top of your shares every once and a while, we will be expanding what is on offer in the “Store” on Farmigo. In the past that spot had been mainly for exchanging flex items based on the number of credits you have determined by your share size. This year there will be more on offer in the store and you can purchase extra vegetables outside of your assigned credits if you wish. This will of course vary weekly on what our fields are full of. So, if you have a dinner party coming up and really need some extra kale for that salad, check if we have extra on offer in the store and buy it!
We will try our best to offer processing quantities of tomatoes and cucumbers for canning and pickling that will be available for purchase in the store.
And last but not least, we have a Flower Share! We will have gorgeous bouquets of local flowers grown just over the river in Virginia by Sage at Far Bungalow Farm. We have a limited number of shares available to jump on it!
Secondly, on the topic of change, we are revisiting our delivery hold and skipped week policy. For a bit of background, we had 61 folks with credits from delivery holds in the 2022 season. This all totaled around $3000. That amount plus the $6000 we pay annually in credit card fees comes to an amount that puts in quite a tough spot. We continue to offer the option of paying with credit card in order to offer payment plans so we can make our CSA more accessible.
We know that the delivery hold option is valued by our members, and we want to be able to offer that kind of flexibility. However, losing that amount of money each year really isn’t sustainable for our business. We have come up with a new version of our delivery hold and credit system and we hope you understand this change.
Starting this year, the policy is as follows:
When you choose to skip a week and place a delivery hold, you will be issued a credit at the end of the year that can be applied to purchasing the next season's CSA share. You are allowed 1 skipped week per calendar year.
· So, if you sign up for the summer share only you get 1 skipped week.
· If you sign up for the fall share only you get 1 skipped week.
· If you sign up for both summer + fall then you get 1 skipped week.
You can certainly skip more if you will be away, but we can only offer credit for 1 skipped week for the total of the calendar year.
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