FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Who are you?
The 607 CSA is now a program of Catskills Agrarian Alliance, a comprehensive food sovereignty project built from the ground up by farmers in Delaware, Otsego, and Schoharie Counties in New York State. For a decade, our community of farmers have been working (out of necessity) on an alternative production and distribution project aimed to ensure food-security for the NYC food-shed by scaling through collaboration and aggregation. We fundraise to provide mutual aid to historically under-resourced communities; grow and source food from local farms; facilitate regional land-access work; and operate a regional value-chain.
The 607 CSA is the backbone of this organization. The shares members buy not only keep farming viable in the Catskills by creating access to a market for participating small family farms and food businesses, but also help to support the trucking infrastructure on which all of our mutual aid and farm-to-institution work rely.
What is Community Supported Agriculture?
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a system by which consumers become shareholders of a local farm to share its risks and rewards. Our CSA members are the backbone of our farms. Your support gets us growing in the Spring and your enthusiasm sustains us throughout the season. In return, we share the bounty of our harvest.
What are the benefits of CSA?
Beautiful, nutritious, organic produce. Freshness that can't be beat. Patronizing a local business that hosts your pickup and meeting your neighbors there. The satisfaction of supporting local farms and the creation of a resilient regional food system. We believe changing the food-system is a form of REVOLUTION.
And, it's a great deal! Barring huge crop failures or natural disasters, we fill each box with more than $30 worth of produce each week and give you the option to add other farms' products to your share. We'll also include recipes to enhance your veggie experience and send you a weekly newsletter update about what’s happening on the farms and in our other work.
How does it work?
Each week for twenty-six weeks we harvest the best, most abundant produce and put together a box of seven to ten items (5-ish items for ½ shares). The selection of vegetables changes throughout the season. As a member, you will pick up your share at one of several drop-off locations. The 607 CSA also functions as a weekly market. You can add on many items from various Catskills’ farms and food businesses at whatever frequency works for you–with every veg share, bi-weekly, monthly, or just once. We are a whole-diet CSA.
When/Where do we pick up our shares?
See times and locations. Home delivery of shares or weekly market items is available to Upstate members.
Why summer and fall shares?
We have veggies the whole year (June-November) but we pride ourselves on being flexible. You're welcome to purchase a full season (summer and fall) now, or to start with the summer share and see how you like it. Or purchase fall only if you’re away all summer. There's no deadline to purchase a share, but the earlier you do, the easier it will be for us to grow for you. Sales from the shares fund spring production expenses.
What can we expect in our veggie shares?
Typically each share contains salad greens, braising greens, an herb, and a selection of whatever other vegetables are in season. The selection of vegetables change throughout the season: in spring you can typically expect lots of leafy greens and some storage crops (potatoes, sunchokes, carrots); in summer peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash come into season; fall is the most abundant time with everything imaginable in your bag.
How do I purchase food other than veggies?
Once you have purchased one of the seasonal veggie shares or a “build your own share” you can add as many of the additional items as you like, at whatever frequency works for you. Options are: with every share, bi-weekly, monthly, or one-time.
Are the veggies organic?
The farms are either USDA Certified Organic or Farmers' Pledge. Organic produce is grown without using specific conventional pesticides, fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge, bioengineering, or ionizing radiation. We pay great attention to practicing sustainable farming methods and benefit from rich farmland and an abundance of fresh water sources. We are particularly nerdy about soil health. If you're curious about our farming practices, feel free to talk shop with us any time, or better yet, pay us a visit!
What are my payment options?
By selling membership in advance of the growing season, a CSA reduces the burden of up-front costs for the farmer. Your membership fees paid in advance provide us with money to purchase seed and equipment before the season starts, and we appreciate your commitment. If you cannot afford to pay for the entire share up-front, we offer pay-per-delivery, direct-debited weekly or bi-weekly, depending on your share schedule. Anything other than veg shares will be billed on delivery. The 607 CSA now offers sliding scale payment options for veggie shares. You can find out more about our sliding scale here.
Why do Upstate shares cost the same as NYC shares? Shouldn’t they be less expensive since it’s closer? This is a really good question. And while it would seem that shares for members in Upstate NY would be less expensive to distribute, it’s actually quite the opposite. Currently the bulk of our shares go to members in the city, and that volume brings the costs associated with transport down significantly. With Upstate shares, we are trailblazing new, sprawled out and less populous parts of the state and so the costs associated with transporting those shares (many drop-offs being a minimum of 45 minutes apart) are currently higher.
Who gets the dough?
Veggie shares are a shared enterprise between Lucky Dog, Berry Brook, and Chicory Creek farms collaboratively managed between the farms and CAA/607 teams. Occasionally, we spice things up by including veg from Star Route Farm, our Amish neighbors and other local veggie farms. We handle payouts thusly: First, we total sales (from all tiers of the sliding scale shares). Next, we subtract expenses like software fees, trucking, supplies, and sales to the aforementioned extra farms. Finally, we take the ‘profit’ and split it between the vegetable farms according to the percentages they contribute to veggie shares. We do payouts in June after the CSA starts so the farms can use the money to start up in the spring when sales are slow. We do another pay out in the fall to account for late sign-ups and to make sure the final percentages are correct. If you’re a farmer and interested in our veggie tracking and shared pricing sheet hit us up and we’ll share it with you.
For all the other goods: Each contributing farm shares with us their product availability and wholesale price. We mark the products up 30% to help subsidize trucking, packaging, and packing labor expenses. The farmers invoice us weekly as they deliver goods and we pay within a month. At the same time we order CSA items from farms, we’re ordering food for our mutual aid work, farm to institution work, and wholesale accounts to be delivered at the same time the CSA goes out.
Who's doing all this admin, logistics, and website work then? Are you paying them?
We have a hardworking team behind the scenes, taking care of CSA details, as well as our wholesale, farm-to-institution, mutual aid, land access, and actual farm work. We are all officially employed by Catskills Agrarian Alliance, a 501c3 that fundraises through grants and donations. You can find out more about all of us here. The CSA income pays for trucking, packing, and farms and does not go to manager payroll.
Are all those photos really your farms/produce?
Yep. And they can be found on our websites or Instagram.
Can we come visit?
Sure, come on up! Get in touch. We are always working on putting together more opportunities for our members to get together, both on the farm(s) and in the city!
Have other questions? E-mail us at the607csa(at)gmail(dot)com and we'll do our best to answer you promptly.