Looking Back, Looking Forward... CSA Year End Review and 2021 Sign Ups Coming Soon!

First Looking Back - 2020 CSA in Review!

Every year, we do a CSA wrap up to assess the season and think, “Hey, we should send this to our members!” And then in the bustle of the holidays and travel and seeing family, that grand plan drops by the wayside.

Enter 2020, where we ain’t got nothing but time right now. (Okay, we actually have fairly little time because it’s a busy winter on the farm, but since we aren’t driving halfway across the country and back twice, it feels like more time than normal.) In the midst of all our normal winter thinking and planning and prepping, we wanted to share some of it with you, our great members and customers.

First of all, we really appreciated being farmers this summer.

We generally always like being farmers (at least when we aren’t breaking things or sliding around calf deep mud), but this summer it felt different knowing that growing local food helped folks reduce how much you had to buy elsewhere.

When things are so weird, it’s nice to be a part of the simple, low level excitement of delivering a sweet veggie box, talking recipes with kids newly into cooking, or encouraging folks to try new veggies. We loved the little normality of going to market and dropping off shares, when we got that old school 2019 feel of seeing people you don’t live with, as well as all the excitement of new members doing CSA for the first time, returning members loaded with new ideas, and kids really getting into food.

And despite the cold start of mid-May snow, this year’s weather was as good as it gets for us in Fenner, with tons of sun and heat to catch up all the veggies from their chilly start.

The hot, dry weather was helpful for us to harvest for more CSA members and farmers market customers than ever before. For the CSA, we shared a farm high of about 185 boxes a week, feeding close to 225 CSA households. Over the full year, that was 3500 vegetable boxes where we harvested, washed, and packed 70,000 items of produce.

For small shares, CSA distributions ranged in weekly value from $21 in those chilly first weeks to $36 for the hearty fall boxes, with about a $28.75 weekly average value and 8 items a week.

Large shares ranged in weekly value from $33 in the spring up to $57 at peak tomato (maybe that was too many tomatoes for you all?), with a $45 weekly average value and 12 items a week.

For the mix of veggies in CSA shares, 35% of items were staple summer crops (beans, peas, cukes, zukes, peppers, tomatoes, and the like), 24% root staple crops, and 14% easy salad fixings. 8% were more challenging cooking greens, 10% herbs and interesting stuff, and 9% hard to grow items (not hard to use, but those things that are a stretch for northern farmers nowadays - I’m always proud of any broccoli, melons, or cauliflower that we can make happen!). And look, I learned how to make a chart!

More 2020 CSA Season Gratitude:

• We are so thankful for our returning host sites in Fayetteville and Syracuse, but wanted to add a shout out to the Brenners for joining us to host our Manlius site, especially in such a crazy year.

• We are also happy to have been a little part of Cafe 407 (supporting Ophelia’s Place), dropping off there again this year. They are doing such great work in Liverpool, and while temporarily closed, we are hopeful that they will be able to open again soon!

• We also want to shout out to our stalwart team of Brooke, Rachel, and Angela. Part of what makes each CSA season fun is those we get the chance to work with. While we saw each others’ faces a lot less than in normal years, it didn’t lesson any of their awesomeness.

But most of all, we were especially thankful for you, our members and customers, and everyone’s flexibility adapting to our weird new normal. From social distancing at the farmers market to taking a break from CSA swap baskets and cutting back U-Pick. we appreciate everyone rolling with the changes.

Beyond the CSA, this flexibility carried over to a market that moved sites last minute, launching an online store, working out how to cover potential farmer sick leave, and figuring out how to juggle all these new protocols and technologies. Some things worked out really well, like the new Cazenovia market location (where there’s actually easy parking and space for customers to spread out). Others were a bit harder, like all the technological systems that were straining at the seams with so much ordering going on online.

Looking Forward to CSA 2021…

So at the end of 2020, we are looking forward to this new year and CSA season with a lot more focus and excitement than normal (thanks to having to get organized a lot earlier than in previous winters, and that whole not having anything else to do thing… we had hoped to get lots of skating and cross country skiing in, but nature is preventing that too!).

Our biggest new plans for 2021 are to fully utilize our new greenhouse and high tunnel space. Some of this won’t be visible off the farm (a lot of having the extra space just means things like we no longer have to seed trays outside in the rain or under tents!), but others of these space changes will likely end up on your plates - we hope in particular that the new field tunnel means more early and late season hearty veggie and greens crops! And if we have a cold wet year this summer, it will help us keeping those CSA shares filled with warmth loving veggies. We also will be offering garden plants and veggie (plant) boxes for sale off the farm at a few plant sales this spring!

Along that sales front, we will continue (and hopefully improve) our online sales and market preorder system. It’s been a learning curve, but we really appreciate having the chance to offer veggies in lower contact situations than the market.

Finally, the 2021 CSA…

Most aspects of the 2021 CSA will be similar to past years (that’s the plan at this point), including pickup locations (the farm on Fridays and Saturdays, Cazenovia farmers market on Saturdays, and Fayetteville, Manlius, Syracuse, and Liverpool on Tuesdays). The main summer CSA will be 18 weeks, likely starting the week of June 15th (weather depending), but we will keep the option for folks to get your vacation/makeup shares after the season ends in mid-October. The 2021 UPick garden will be flowers only again this year (okay, we will sneak in a row of cherry tomatoes too), but thanks to Brooke and Rachel, we are diversifying and changing up some of our flower mix to more big focal and filler flowers (dahlias, anyone?) to spice up those bouquets.

2021 CSA signups for returning members go live on Monday, January 4th. For those of you that pre-registered (or emailed me about pre-registering), you are already in the system for having a share, so we’ll be emailing you with a link to confirm that you are still in over the next few weeks. CSA shares will open up to new members starting with folks on the waiting list on our farm dogs’ favorite holiday, February 2nd.

Small shares are $445 for the season (about $24.70/week) and large shares are $660 for the season (about $36.70/week). We just have the one price this year with your returning member discount included in it, since the majority of members are returning (thank you all!!!).

We’ve been struggling a bit with this pricing decision, as we know that it’s a tight time for folks, yet at the same time, we’ve seen our costs rise immensely, so we are trying to price and size the shares so that we keep the farm going.

We’ve been steadily becoming more efficient and minimizing farm costs. What’s been the challenge here is that our biggest expense increase since 2018 is hiring folks, not from increasing the hours worked much (we actually have about the same number of staff working the same hours), but from mandated wage, insurance, and benefit increases. From 2018 to 2021, our overall cost of labor rose 225%, annually increasing an average of 33% a year.

We are NOT complaining about this, because our team has always been great - if it wasn’t for them, the veggies and the CSA could not come together! In this crazy year of 2020, it was a relief to know that our employees are covered not just by workers compensation insurance, but by disability, family medical leave, mandated sick leave, and unemployment insurance. Yet all of those are programs that NY small farms like us were only required to include starting this year (right before Covid, coincidentally).

In many places in the US (California and Florida, I’m looking at you), there are fewer wage and labor laws for food producers, which is a major reason why food imported from outside the NY/New England region can seem so cheap compared with our local food (which is largely produced by workers that earn much closer to a living wage, with mandated benefits to protect them in case something goes wrong). It’s been hard for us to grow as a vegetable farm amid this environment where it’s essentially impossible to compete on store prices, though we know our veggies are better than the store (plus we have the UPick garden, and like you all, are striving to be part of the fabric of delicious eating and keeping our money in the community).

I’m also thankful though, to have much of the moral hazard of risking those who work hard for us mandated away. There is a relief to know that if someone gets hurt on our farm, or sick with Covid, we are able to take care of them. And we are thankful as well for you, our CSA members and customers, who help support us all in this adventure.

Thank you again for your support and for being part of this delicious eating experiment!

We have a wide range of payment options this year, and can set up automated payment plans of any duration (monthly, bi-monthly, weekly - whatever works for you!). And as in past years, you don’t have to pay at sign up (we do anticipate selling out early this winter, so we recommend signing up soon and paying later so you can guarantee a share).

2020 was a crazy year for us, even if being farmers meant it looked on the surface more like “normal.” As we look ahead to our future growth and changes, what’s rising to the top is asking ourselves what we can do here and now to help better provide food for our community across the greater Onondaga/Madison county region? How can we help folks start growing and eating more veggies? And what can we be doing to help make sure this beautiful part of the world stays vibrant long term - adding solar power? Trapping more carbon by our production? Working collaboratively more? As we plan and grow for this next season and CSA and explore options on all these fronts, we’ll keep in touch.

Thank you so much for your support, and we look forward to seeing you this growing season!

Peace, Maryellen and Matt (and don’t let the squirrels win, adds Beulah)