I imagine many people think “I could never run a CSA” because they are imagining a project on a very large scale.  I’d invite gardeners and small farmers to consider the fact that the CSA model is truly remarkable and deeply scalable, and can work even for home gardeners able to produce more than they can eat.

I started Gleanings Farm CSA in the summer of 2003 simply because I was producing more of many crops than I needed, but not sufficiently more to feel that I had enough to bring to farmer’s market.  I wanted to make a little money from all the work I was doing in the garden, mostly enough to keep buying more fruit trees and perennial plants.  My goal was to break even on my garden expenses, or maybe make a little money.  We started with five subscribers, but could have done so with two or even one. Indeed, I know may people who use a very small model – one neighbor pays for seeds and soil amendments, the other does the work. I even know someone who loves to cook and can, but hates to garden who teamed up with a gardening neighbor – the neighbor grows the food, she takes everything, turns it into meals and canned food, and returns half of it to her neighbor as dinner.

The thing about the CSA is that it really only represents a sharing of your farm or garden with another person – it could be one person or 500, you may use cash as a medium of exchange or barter.  Over the years we ran the CSA (which eventually expanded its membership into the low 20s, before I gave it up to write), we traded with people for use of a car, included our local food pantry as a “member” and bartered shares for babysitting. Other CSAs trade baskets for help working on the farm.  The advantage of being a very small CSA was that we had this flexibility built-in.

There are some realities of running a CSA.  You need to commit to a season, and be sure you can keep the food coming.  You need a contract, a sense of what you will offer and when, and a serious commitment to keeping your customers fed and happy.  While the loss of one crop or another is no crisis, you have to be able to fill the baskets every week.  We added flowers, home baked bread and eggs from our chickens to our CSA baskets to help balance things – and we found that the customers were more enthusiastic about these than anything else.  I’ve heard of FSA’s – flower-only CSAs, where one person keeps a home or small business (I know of two people who have this relationship with small restaurants, keeping the table bouquets fresh) in flowers all season long.  Had we ever experienced catastrophic crop loss, we would have either bought food from another organic farmer at our cost, or refunded a portion of the money to our clients, depending on their preference.

And one does have to be somewhat aware of other people’s needs and preferences – many people love the idea of the CSA, but they aren’t accustomed to meal planning on short notice, and they don’t now eat a lot of kale or fava beans.  Familiar foods are usually the most popular – and recipes and help in making use of new ingredients are appreciated.  Chatty, friendly newsletters that keep your neighbors up with the news of the farm are always welcome.  People really have a hard time understanding how to use what you are giving them, so be patient, helpful and full of advice.  It helps if you cook as well as garden, because the biggest difficulty is likely to be people figuring out how to use these foods and enjoy them.

What’s the downside?  The obvious farm things – picking in the heat, dealing with crop losses.  There’s the fact that odds are, if a crop experiences damage you may not get much of it, or you may only get the tomatoes that have split or have bird pecks.  Perhaps the biggest pleasure of all from stopping running the CSA was the eating of the best of the produce.  But those are small prices, and ones that can be overcome.

What’s a fair price?  For organically grown (if you make less than 5,000 dollars in farm earnings you don’t need to be certified to call yourself organic, otherwise, just tell people that you are “chemical free” assuming, of course, that you are) produce for 20 weeks, we charged $500 – a shorter CSA or a different market might get a different price – New York City CSAs are more expensive, rural areas with a lot of them or inner cities may be cheaper.  If your goal is just to collaborate with one or two neighbors, you might discuss barter arrangements.

We used plastic laundry baskets (the round kind) that could be reused each week (2 for each customer so they can be exchanged, plus a couple of extra in case people forget to return them) and reused containers for eggs and produce.  In June, early on, the basket would be filled with strawberries, a lettuce salad with edible flowers, various greens, some rhubarb, peas if they were in yet.  By late fall we’d be back to greens, squash, cabbage.  I think in retrospect I would have done better to do a shorter season – I went until the week before Halloween and was ready (at least psychologically) to be done by mid-October.  But that would vary depending on your area and growing season.

There are infinite possible variations on the CSA model. Could you supply herbs to local restaurants?  Flowers?  Do a winter share, growing greens under protection and delivering roots and squash you store?  Some places do a canning share, a one or two time delivery of a large quantity of something – perhaps you could start the first all Canning CSA – concentrating on cucumbers, tomatoes, hot peppers and green beans and other things people like to preserve.  The sky is the limit.

And there’s really no limit to how small you can be.  In Japanese, the term for “CSA” means “farming with a face” – that is, building a tie between local producers and those who eat.  The customer for your small CSA may be the face next to yours, or down the block, the elderly lady who can’t garden any more or the young man who has no time.  Or perhaps you and a gardening neighbor can combine your yards, and each produce half a CSA’s worth.  There are endless possibilities.