CSA

Sign up for a 2024 Summer CSA!

CSA stands for “Community Supported Agriculture.” CSA represents a shared commitment, a direct, mutually beneficial relationship between community members, consumers, farmers and the land on which we grow. We truly build our CSA together by making an annual commitment to support each other.

Our community members (farm share members) commit to the farm for the season, providing farmers with secure income when expenses are highest, and in return, farmers commit to providing their shareholders with a season-long bounty of vegetables, fresh from the farm. This direct connection and relationship building that occurs between farmer and consumers bypasses middle-person, strengthens the farm operation by securing revenue in the early parts of the season when many of our expenditures take place, benefits the environment by decreasing packaging and pollution, and serves our consumers by providing fresh, high-quality, organically grown vegetables at competitive prices. It’s a way that community members can support local farms by committing to sharing both the risks and the bounty of a season of farming.

CSA’s are a great opportunity to connect with the land and people who grow food. Purchasing a Farm Share means that food travels fewer miles from farm to plate, creates less packaging, and circulates money in your local community, enhancing your local economy.

How does CSA work?

When you join a CSA you become a “CSA member” or “Farm Share member” which means you get to take home a portion of the farm’s harvest every week (in the summer and fall), or every month (in the winter and spring). These regular veggie pick-ups are called your  “Farm Share” or your “CSA share”. We use these interchangeably. Each season, there are specific times and places that you can pick-up your farm share. 

Joining a CSA means making a choice to eat seasonally. Members should expect the variety of vegetables to shift from month to month. What we harvest changes over the course of the season, depending on what grows in that season. We do our very best to provide you, each week, with a wide variety of produce including choice of salad greens, cooking greens, roots, alliums (onions/scallions/garlic), and fruits (cucumbers/squash/tomatoes/peppers) as these crops are ready to harvest. It’s exciting to watch the changing of the seasons reflected on your kitchen table! 

Why Choose Just Roots?

Just Roots offers CSA shares year-round to provide consistent, equitable access to local food for all Franklin County residents! Our model includes the following:

1. Food Equity Philosophy– We believe that access to ecologically-grown, local vegetables is a basic human right. The Just Roots CSA is for everyone, regardless of income.
2. Flexible Sliding-scale and Payment Plans – Because of the reality of wealth inequality, Just Roots has created a sliding scale for our shares, with lots of payment plan options and the ability to accept SNAP and HIP. We ask that CSA members make their own choice about how much to pay. Some folks can pay more to cover the true costs of growing, harvesting, and distributing the food; others can justifiably pay less. We encourage each person to pay what they can, given their own circumstances. Payment plan options  are unique for each CSA program and can be found on each seasonal CSA webpage.
3. Free Choice/Market Style – For our Summer and Winter CSA Shares, we set up a weekly assortment of our freshly harvested veggies and you get to choose which items you want to bring home to your kitchen. This gives you the flexibility to try new things, but the comfort of being able to choose.
4. Year-Round Offerings – We believe that people should be able to eat good, local vegetables year round! We have created CSA options that span the whole year. 
5. Pick Your Own Garden – During the summer season, every CSA member has access to the farm’s Pick-Your-Own Garden anytime Tuesday-Saturday during daylight hours. Come pick flowers, cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, husk cherries, beans, and peas!
6. Food Demos – Each of our CSA pick-ups gives you a chance to sample some of the vegetables that week. We create simple recipes to take home and do a little demonstration so you can try a taste of something new!
7. Community Meals – Food brings people together, and we celebrate this through our free monthly community meals (called “Feastivals”) where we invite the community to help us cook a delicious farm-fresh meal and share the feast! 

Just Roots Year-Round CSA Offerings

• Summer CSA (Franklin County) – The Summer CSA Farm Share provides a weekly, seasonal array of fresh veggies for you to choose from, plus access to the farm’s Pick-Your-Own Garden. The summer share runs for 20 weeks from June to October. We offer multiple pick-up days and locations throughout Greenfield and on the farm. Each week, you can pick-up your farm share wherever it is most convenient for you. Each pick-up includes recipes, cooking demos and friendly faces from the farm excited to share more with you about the farm and the food coming out of its fields. When you sign up for a Summer CSA Farm Share, you can choose between a FULL SHARE, which typically feeds 3-5 people and includes 9 items of your choice each week, or a SMALL SHARE, which typically feeds 1-3 people and includes 6 items of your choice each week. There are a variety of sliding scale options and payment plans available.
  
  There is also an option to experience the entire growing season by extending your share into the winter to receive two additional bountiful pickups, one in November and one in December.
  
  
• Extended Share – Your autumn stews and holiday feasts just won’t be complete without Just Roots veggies! Our Extended Share is two BOUNTIFUL pickups of delicious wintery treats in November and December. Each pick-up contains about 12-15 types of winter vegetables–a bountiful bushel or more of produce! 
  
  
• Winter Box Share – Our box share is distributed once per month from January through May. Each month, members enjoy a box of fresh, delicious, local vegetables! Your monthly box will have a selection of about a dozen vegetables/fruits from Just Roots and other local farms. You’ll also get recipes, tips, and stories from the farm!

What’s the history of CSA?

We honor and are grateful to all the thinkers and do-ers who dreamed up the CSA model and made it flourish in recent years! 

In the United States, Dr. Booker T. Whatley (1915-2005), created a ground-breaking model for Clientele Membership Clubs that inspired the contemporary CSA. He wrote: “The clientele membership club is the lifeblood of the [farm]. It enables the farmer to plan production, anticipate demand, and of course, have a guaranteed market. The farmer has to seek out people-city folks, mostly- to be members of the club. The annual membership fee [gives] each of those families the privilege of coming to the farm and harvesting produce at approximately 60 percent of the supermarket price.”

While the CSA model arose concurrently throughout the world in the 70s and 80s including cooperative farming initiatives in Chile and Japan, some of the first farms in the US identifying themselves as CSAs arose right here in Massachusetts.

Just Roots launched its first CSA Farm Share Program in 2013, which you can read more about in our “About” and “The Farm” sections.