Sign up NOW for SUMMER, 2025!
Pork is Also currently available from the farm.
Read on below to learn about our Shares.
Winter CSA 2024-2025
|
SUmmer CSA 2025
|
10-WEEK Saturday CSA 2025
ON-FARM PICK-UP ONLY. Are you growing a garden, or just not sure you can eat a full share of veggies? Sign up and get a ten-week punch card, good for the entire summer season of 20 weeks. Each week we'll email on Thursday morning what will be in the share. Contact us by Friday at 10 a.m. to reserve your share. We'll have it packed for pick-up on the farm on Saturday, and you can pick up anytime 10 to 5 p.m. Sorry, no substitutions: the farm is one integrated system, and we focus on a diversity of crops, rather than a handful of common items. Eggs and pork sold separately. Order your punch card now to get priority on Saturday boxes!
$390 for 10 week choices, please mail us a check. |
It's more important than ever to have a close connection to your food. As a CSA shareholder, you are deeply connected to your farmer, and help provide her livelihood. While there are many ways to access local foods today, and Organic veggies are available from many stores, your direct involvement with this farm is at the core of its ability to remain in business, and for local farms like ours to be there for you in good times and in bad for the long term. My Ph.D. research was clear on this: most veggie farms that stayed in business for more than a decade had a CSA model as the backbone of their cash flow, even if they also provided wholesale produce to local or regional stores. Most of your contribution to my farm is spent in the local community! Community Supported Agriculture is the closest model we have to domestic Fair Trade. You share the risks and joys of the farming season directly with the farm.
We are a woman-owned business committed to:
- The freshest possible produce you can buy.
- Growing nutrient dense foods in healthy soils... most of our plots registered 10% organic matter in 2021! That's a lot of carbon we are pulling out of the atmosphere!
- Growing on a human-scaled, carbon-conscious farm
- minimal use of large, fossil-fuel-driven equipment; no-till, intensively planted gardens are hand planted and harvested. We also use a minimum of plastic: weed-smothering tarps that last 20 years and clear film on our hoophouse (now 20 years old). We DON'T use single-use plastic mulch on our growing beds. We use corn-based plastic bags for the produce that needs it.
- minimal use of large, fossil-fuel-driven equipment; no-till, intensively planted gardens are hand planted and harvested. We also use a minimum of plastic: weed-smothering tarps that last 20 years and clear film on our hoophouse (now 20 years old). We DON'T use single-use plastic mulch on our growing beds. We use corn-based plastic bags for the produce that needs it.
- Growing less common fruits high in antioxidants and minerals.
- Growing open-pollinated crops and preserving our seed heritage.
- Raising rare breed livestock.
- Fruits and vegetables grown without synthetic herbicides, insecticides, fungicides or fertilizers.
- Biodiversity, including pollinators.
- Supporting the next generation of farmers through mentoring.
- Supporting local sustainable economic development.
Eat Well
This is an intimate CSA of about 30 families/individuals in the summer on Wednesdays, 5-10 families/individuals any given summer Saturday, and 15 families/individuals in the winter, so your farmer can truly have a relationship with you. Each week you’ll enjoy six to ten different crops picked at the height of flavor and freshness:
SUMMER:
- Greens: You’ll get a bag of salad mix, a head of lettuce, or a bouquet of braising greens every week
- Fruit: apples, fruit preserves, strawberries, raspberries, saskatoons, currants, elderberries, cider, pears, and other organically-grown fruits in season.
- Veggies: beans, beets, broccoli, carrots, cucumbers, garlic, kohlrabi, leeks, onions, peas, potatoes, radishes, summer squash, winter squash, tomatoes, and turnips, oh my! As weather permits.
- Other Treats: You can also relish fresh herbs, sprouts, eggs from our own farm (raised with 100% organic grain and on full pasture!), and occasional pickled products.
WINTER
- Greens: You’ll get a bag of salad mix, sprouts, and/or a braising mix every week, cut fresh from our winter greenhouse.
- Fruit: Fresh and dried apples, fruit preserves, and frozen cider make up our winter fruit offerings.
- Alliums: You’ll get a rotation of garlic, onions, and sometimes leeks we grow for the winter.
- Storage Veggies: You’ll get a rotation of beets, carrots, potatoes, turnips, squash, and a few other goodies we grow for the winter.
- Other Treats: You can also relish fresh and dried herbs, flavored vinegar, sprouts, eggs from our hens, and occasional pickled products.
How will I get my weekly produce?
We deliver every Wednesday to Ashland, Bayfield, Cornucopia, Duluth (any neighborhood) Herbster, Iron River, Superior, and Washburn. We deliver directly to your home! We’ll provide all the details to you in a pre-season email, after we have finalized our membership. Saturday CSA members pick up on the farm, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
How It Works
The Summer CSA runs from the first week in June through the third week of October: Twenty weeks of fresh local produce! The Winter CSA runs weekly from the first week in December through the end of March: Seventeen weeks of fresh local produce in the heart of winter!
We’ll email a short newsletter every week that gives some recipe suggestions, general farm and food news, and CSA logistical announcements, so please provide your email when you sign up.
Is the Elsewhere Farm CSA a Good Fit? (Read this before you pay!)
Are you new to CSAs? Are you considering switching CSAs? This way of accessing local food is different than buying produce at the farmer's market or a Coop. As a CSA shareholder, you are not only gaining access to local produce, you are developing a relationship with one farm. In our case, you are investing in the long term development of a model that can withstand climate chaos, sequester carbon, harbor biodiversity, and fairly support a solo (woman) farmer. I love community and there are lots of great farms in the area that hire workers. The model that I'm trying to develop as a solo farmer, incubating other small farmers over time, allows for many more small business owners (rather than workers) -- which in our rural community leads to a stronger local economy and greater civic engagement.
I say "we" a lot on this website: when you invest in this farm, you are also investing in the development of a full agroecological system... I work as a team with all the plants and animals and pollinators and other beings on my farm. I couldn't do it alone! When you invest in this farm, you are supporting a diverse system that balances, feeds, and nurtures itself. Our work is largely by hand to preserve soil carbon, minimize the use of fossil fuels, and work within an intricate, diverse landscape. While fossil-fuel based, and plastic intensive Organic production might get you cheaper produce in the short term, it's my goal to develop a farm model that will be productive when fossil fuels are prohibitively expensive, and when large machinery doesn't work because the ground is too wet or to dry (as is already happening). While we do own a tractor, it's used perhaps once a year to spread compost! So, if you buy a CSA share from my farm, you are buying into the development of a model of food production that will be there several generations from now. And yes, all that ecological stewardship and hand labor does cost more in our current economy, which heavily subsidizes industrial production, including industrial Organic production, because fossil fuels and plastics are still relatively cheap (in dollars).
You, as a shareholder, are investing in the whole farm, and helping to bear the risks of the season with the farmer. In return you get a weekly box of farm goodness! With increasing climate change and extreme weather, sometimes you might not get a full quantity of vegetables for the week (June weather can be particularly extreme). However, in over ten years of CSA production, we have always met the full value of the box over the course of the whole season, plus some. Our price reflects a fairer wage to the farmer, all the ecological services we are providing, and the trial and error that goes into building a climate resilient model of production for the future. We are actively working with our core group and local researchers to help develop better access models so that people of all incomes can more easily participate. Since 2021 we have partnered with CHUM in Duluth and have donations from some members to help subsidize shares in Chequamegon Bay.
There are now many CSAs in the region, and each has its own flavor. Elsewhere Farm only offers full shares, and our members range from single retirees to families. We occasionally have two families split a summer share just to try it out, but we don't recommend this, given the volume of produce in our shares. (There are other CSAs in the area that prioritize families and give a lot of extra produce). People's produce consumption varies widely, so determining if the share size will be a good fit for you is a conversation: We aim to offer a portion of the recommended weekly serving recommendations for families of four and the majority of a single person's full produce needs, assuming three to five cups of produce a day per person. We try to keep the share quantities level from week to week, but there is usually an increase of produce in the second half of the summer CSA, compared to the early summer. We don't generally dump a huge excess of produce on our shareholders, since we are largely a hand-powered farm, and labor is a huge portion of our costs. (Most farmers in the U.S. have an off-farm job in the family to help meet expenses since food is vastly undervalued in our culture!)
Our Summer CSA is heavy on brassicas and greens: we farm in a frost pocket near Lake Superior, and tomatoes are not a huge portion of the boxes. We don't grow eggplant or peppers for sale. We do include eggs from our own hens in most of the weeks' shares, and we are continually increasing our fruit offerings. We can happily substitute if you can't eat eggs (or have your own chickens), are vegan and can't eat eggs, or are allergic to nightshades. We minimize the amount of sugar in our value added products for the winter, and we highlight keto recipes in our newsletters. (You don't have to be keto to enjoy recipes with lots of veggies!). If you have other questions about whether or not we are right for you, email or give us a call!
How Do I Pay?
Shares break down to $36 to $39 per week depending on which one you purchase: The Winter 24-25 share was $645 for 17 weeks. Make the check payable to Elsewhere Farm and mail to the address at the top of the screen. We have stopped using Paypal, but if you prefer to pay via credit card, call or email us to find out how to send the transaction.
Consider making an additional donation for one or more of the following:
-- Cover our extended mileage with home to home delivery: $20.
--Elsewhere Farm Capital Investment Fund (goes to long-term physical improvements):$20 to $100
--Donation for subsidized shares: $20 to $50
QUESTIONS? Call or email Farmer Clare! 715-774-3153 or elsewherefarmherbster (at) gmail.com
Elsewhere Farm
16550 Nicoletti Road
Herbster WI 54844
|
|
|
|
|
|
|