Starting CSA in the farm's first year?

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In practical terms, how easy is it to set up CSA in Year 1 of your farm? Unless you already personally know all your prospective CSA members, how would you go about persuading people to sign up, since it's Year 1 and you have no proof that you can actually produce anything? As a first-year grower, can you even expect to produce reliably across the entire season?

As for most things on the tiny farm, there is no one right answer. You should let your common sense prevail in making a decision on CSA for your first year. The main factors are your growing abilities, your confidence in your abilities (goes a long way to how convincingly you present your case to prospective members), and the people in your area.

For a really short, generic answer, I'd say it's probably best to small-farm for at least a year, possibly two or three, before going into CSA, even if you start out planning to go the CSA route for the long haul. But, it can also be fantastic (energizing and lots of fun) to just LEAP...! ;)

[edit] Things to consider

• Your skills: If you think you've got a decent handle on both growing stuff AND on organizing lots of details AND you've got a production plan on paper that you're confident in, you should be fine. If you're not feeling strong on ANY of these points, it's probably good to do at least a year of farmers' market, weekly boxes, farm stand, which are all demanding, but not quite as rigid as weekly CSA shares. With CSA, you have to have a well-rounded selection every week, with enough for every member.
• Your potential market: Right now, there's a lot of quite intense public interest in food quality, food safety, environmental issues, and local food, and CSA itself is becoming better known. That means there are prospective CSA members aplenty, especially if you're near a city or big town. BUT, this also means many people are ready to sign without thinking things through. Members have to be prepared for WEEKLY pick-up and for getting a preselected share. Perceptions of convenience and inconvenience can make a big difference in how people behave. You'll probably find that membership numbers are far from everything, especially if you're spending many of your critical spring hours and days bringing on all-new members, arranging drop-off details and so forth. Then, even a couple of unhappy shareholders can be a bit of an energy drain right through the season. And if you have a big turnover every year, that kind of defeats the purpose of a stable CSA base. Knowing and being known by the people around can be really helpful in starting off with a good base.
• Delivery distance: If you're delivering to a town or city, especially more than a half-hour drive away, dealing with the logistics of that regular trip can be quite heavy, time-consuming, stressful. The closer your farm is to the market (ideally, shareholders would pick up at your farm), the much easier things will be. The farther you are, and the bigger the city and ship numbers, the more you'll find yourself involved in vehicles, cooling, tight schedules, TRAFFIC, and the like: loads of very not-tiny-farming things. Not that you're trying to create some fairy tale tiny farm world, just that when it comes to CSA and distance, it's easy to unintentionally find yourself involved in a whole second business of food distribution that you may not have planned for.

[edit] Strategies and plans

You can go from well-prepared and cautious, to leaping in. All approaches can work...

[edit] A not-in-Year 1 plan

"How to start up is definitely a big consideration. For me, I'll probably start with a combination farmers' market/box scheme, and build CSA into my long-term plan. In an ideal world, I could transfer market and box customers into subscriptions--it would seem that if you have an excellent product, and are selling your customers an experience and value system in addition to produce, that this would be a natural transition.

"I like to plan big and see the whole picture, then break things down into manageable pieces and start piece-by-piece from the ground up. Seems like this could apply to tiny farming too."

[edit] A modified CSA plan

"Some other folks had started a CSA here several years back, and it didn't work out, so we decided on a modified CSA which is really just a kind of Internet version of the old fashioned village market. I put out ads in organic groceries, homeschool newsletters, etc and talked to market customers from the previous year, and got a list of people who wanted regular produce--no commitments, no scary money-down scenarios. So I send out an email list of produce, prices and availability every week, and arrange pick-ups at the Farmers' Market, and also will drop off larger orders for customers between the farm and the market (about 25 miles). So far it has been successful, though not as wildly successful as I had hoped; anyway, its a good way to establish a customer base without asking for too much--you could try that and then see about a standard CSA in a few years, once you have a reputation and trust.

[edit] Playing it by ear

"Before this season I had never grown a vegetable! This year I have 3/4 of an acre of a market garden with many of the plants being organic heirloom seed varieties. I should also add that the majority of my life was spent in a life of meat and potatoes, and a rat race life style. I have realized just how important the 'tiny farm' life is and well, here I am.

"I always jump into things with few expectations and go way over my head. I do not believe in the word failure. Myself, friends and neighbors have ate very well this summer, I have learned many new things, I have attempted sales at 3 retail outlets, investigated the local farmers market, and created incredible compost for next years plants. :-) It was very sad to see how much harvest I had and how little I was able to sell. Not enough to make the farmers' market time investment and too much for un-established retail traffic. Not too mention way to much work for one person.

Here we are in September and my garden is just nicely giving full harvests and I have just recently bumped into a 'mobile market' concept where contacts are made with day cares, restaurants and catering businesses. All clients specifically concerned with organics and the quality of the food but unable to pay the price required to ensure it from a retail outlet. It is wonderful to have chefs smelling and touching my peppers and tomatoes! They tell me they love the concept because they do not have the time to go to the markets. I show up early morning early in the week, unload my containers from the car on to the parking lot and everyone is smiling and excited to start their week.

I have looked into the CSA concept and am attempting to do something similar with friends more on a week by week basis. There is rarely a single answer for everything or everyone. Just let your lil voice inside guide you and enjoy the ride.

[edit] A successful Year 1 CSA

We did actually start farming for money by establishing a CSA. Now we had been gardening for a number of years, and the year previously we sold a few things at a neighbour's farm stand. But the CSA was our first effort at serious market gardening.

We had 16 families the first year, and went to 46 in year 2. We deliver right to the customer's door (another good reason to limit distance); we actually pulled back in year two, and focused on locations within 25km of the farm. We found these folks by using a 1-page, 2-sided mail out flyer, that sent to our local area and to a community of about 10,000 within our radius.

re credibility, we met with every family who wanted to become s; we explained our program, the steps we take to ensure a crop (i.e. using row cover, raised beds, drip irrigation, successive plantings, etc), we brought pictures of the farm, even printouts of the spreadsheets we use to plan our plantings. In turn we ask them for their veggie preferences, their preferred delivery day (we deliver on Monday or Friday) and (bonus) if there are any other farm goodies we can bring them e.g. pork, beef, chicken, lamb, eggs.

In the first two years, I only had one family that did not subsequently sign up with us after the meeting. That was a case where they didn't like/didn't want more than 50% of the veggies I grow, so I was not sure I could deliver value for money for the few things they did want. I suggested they might find another family to split a share with, each taking the things they liked, but they didn't come on board.

re quality of veggies paramount, that is totally correct. We have not had 100% success in growing, a few crops every year perform poorly. But we plant enough variety (40-plus) of veggies that we can ALWAYS fill the baskets. And we cull them over pretty thoroughly; if it's not good enough for the customers, we eat it our self (or the really ugly ones will go to the piggies). We do a customer satisfaction survey each year, and the one consistent comment has been about the excellent quality of our stuff.

[edit] Advice and tips

[edit] Look before you leap, but leap if you like!

I've never really liked "walk before you can run" type advice, it's fun to think things out in an intense rush, then charge in. But if you're not confident, that'll translate to your first shareholders and to your market garden, and I wouldn't underestimate the drain on your energy and motivation of negative feedback and a not-so-happy bunch of farming partners!!

I'd say the first consideration, skills, is the key thing. If that situation sounds cool, go for it if there's big demand! Or start with a limited number of s, plus farmers' market, etc, for year one. That'd probably be the most fun as well, as you get to try lots of things and change gears every week.

My opinions are based on only four years of CSA, with just over 50 s last year. But I have been through the to-the-big-city route (1-1/2 hour drive to a city of 4 million), and stopped that to go local after two CSA seasons. We've never missed a share or had a really poor week as far as quantity or selection, but I have had to handle a couple of quite unhappy people, and it only takes one to muddy up the flow, especially when you're starting out and critical of your own every move. A thick skin isn't a big advantage here, because this is in the end all about people. Cool members plus conscientious farming seems to be the trick!!

Of course, the bottom line you hear over and over everywhere remains: if your veggies aren't top quality, nothing else will matter!!!

[edit] Don't do it if you're not 100% prepared

Don't do it unless you are totally set up. By totally set up I mean a plan for the garden, what is going to go where, etc, a place designed and built for seedlings, a place designed and built for harvesting, etc, a fence built if you need it to fend off 4 legged crusaders (or 2-legged ones, whatever), trellises built and tested for whether or not they can stand up to strong winds covered in vines, fertile soil, a plan for how you are going to get the produce from the farm to the customer, an idea of what pests to expect and how you're going to deal with them, a community (online or in person) of people who can answer your questions as they come up, etc. etc. etc.

I started my market garden this year and I am SO tired right now. I had two other jobs this past winter and didn't do all the planning I wanted to before starting the garden. I used to be a teacher and always said to the kids, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." yep, teacher was right it would seem!! :) On the other hand, last year my garden was a conventionally farmed wheat field and this year it's an organic garden...a lot of great accomplishments have happened! But, unfortunately, I am so in the hole money-wise, if I started with nothing I'd be living on the streets right now! I have not been able to keep up with anything and have only been to one farmers' market day. If not for my housemate helping me immensely with building stuff I would likely have totally given up by now.

I have 2 CSA customers and I can tell you, it is stressful! Because of the wet weather everything is late. They seem understanding enough & the bins are getting bigger. Next week maybe cherry tomatoes! I hope to be able to deliver them the $320 value for their share. By stressful, I mean there is so much other stuff I have to think about that could have been thought about and dealt with in the winter...but I didn't have time...that when it came time to put the bin together I was stressed. Don't get me wrong, it's exciting too. I mean producing great food for great people is what it's all about.

If I had to do it all over again with that great 20/20 hindsight, I would first of all try to put a nice little start-up nest egg together and the first year get the garden ready: build the fence, make the beds, spread the manure offered to me by my farmer and let it sit except for an area dedicated to growing food just for me and my housemate, keep the weeds under control...basically, take the hit on the land rental & start-up costs and get everything set up for next year and then do some marketing in the wintertime and hit the ground running in the Spring! And if I had anything extra trot it down to the farmers' market and whatever I brought home would be bonus money.

As it is, I think that unless I team up with another farmer or two and do the CSA as a joint venture I likely won't pursue it next year. But maybe after a winter to recharge the batteries I'll think differently. :)

I would like to add that I am finding more and more people are getting into the swing of the 'local food' idea, even here in Conservativille, so you might find that if you advertise in the winter/springtime, you might catch a few sharers. Your first year that might be all you want, just to make sure that you really do actually enjoy having a CSA in your area. The next year your customer base will expand if you've done a good job with your first year sharers.

Just have as many ducks in a row as possible before you start out b/c there will be many surprises that jump out at you along the way!