Reporting on the craft, economics, and rules of small CSA farming, from the harvest list to the last box on the pickup table.
practical guide
Your share calendar is a promise you make in January and keep in August. Here is how to build it backward from frost dates, days to maturity, and the successions that carry each week.
Read the full report: How to Build a 22 Week CSA Share Calendar From Seeding Dates
comparison
Fixed boxes, choice tables, and market credit accounts each move produce differently and each demands a different harvest day. What every model asks of your crew, your cooler, and your cash flow.
Read the full report: Fixed Box vs Choice Box vs Market Credit: Three CSA Models Compared
mistakes to avoid
Most members who quit do not quit over a bad crop. They quit over the swap you made without telling them. The substitution habits that erode renewals, and what to do the week after one lands badly.
Read the full report: The Substitution Mistakes That Drive CSA Members to Cancel
regulation and compliance
Most CSA farms fall under the Produce Safety Rule qualified exemption, but the exemption is not automatic. What the sales tests measure, which records prove it, and what still applies at pickup.
Read the full report: FSMA Produce Safety Rule: Qualified Exemptions for CSA Farms
case study
Two farms started selling seasons instead of vegetables in 1986. What Indian Line and Temple-Wilton wrote down, how their budgets were set, and which of their structures still hold up today.
Read the full report: Temple-Wilton and Indian Line: How the First US CSAs Were Built
trends and outlook
Flex shares, SNAP authorization, nutrition incentive dollars, and winter storage boxes are changing who signs up and when they pay. What is moving, and what it would take to try any of it.
Read the full report: The CSA Models Gaining Ground: Flex Shares, SNAP, and Storage Weeks
checklist
Harvest morning runs on order, not speed. A step by step list from the night before cooler check to the fifteen minute debrief, sized for a farm packing roughly one hundred and fifty boxes.
Read the full report: The Harvest Morning Checklist for a 150 Box CSA Pack Out
numbers and benchmarks
A share price is the last number you set, not the first. How to work from yield per hundred bed feet, labor minutes per box, and fixed costs to a defensible price and a break even member count.
Read the full report: Pricing a CSA Share: Cost Per Box Math From Bed Feet to Break Even
field report
Three inches of rain arrive on a Tuesday and the Thursday share list is already wrong. A day by day account of what holds in the ground, what is lost, and how the box and the note get rewritten.
Read the full report: A Rain Week on a CSA Farm: Which Crops Hold and Which Are Lost