Member Zone

+ When does the CSA begin (and end)?

2022 distributions start Tuesday, June 14th for Syracuse, Manlius, and Fayetteville; Friday, June 17th on the farm, and Saturday, June 18th at the Cazenovia Farmers Market.

We run the shares for 18 weeks (17 boxes and one week - July 5, 8, and 9 - off), which means they normally end in late-October, weather depending (we say weather depending, because who knows what Mother Nature is plotting for 2022?!).

There will be a week after the main season for makeup shares. This means that members can skip getting a share for any reason, and just make up that share at the end of the season. We hope this helps add some flexibility to your life.

This also allows us to shut down the farm for a week or two, just in case we have sick crew on the farm (fingers crossed that we all stay well this summer). We are following social distancing here, but want to make sure we keep things as safe as can be!

+ How we communicate with you!

We send out weekly newsletters using MailChimp, which can sometimes end up in your spam filter. Please go in there and make sure that info@hartwoodfarm.com is a trusted address so you can see your email and learn about all the great stuff heading your way each week.

You can also reach us anytime at our farm number 315 655 5652 (this is a landline, so can’t receive texts). We also do include our cell numbers in the member emails, so make sure you check them so that you can easily reach us. Remember if you text us to let us know who you are so we can make sure to answer your question correctly!

+ Where do we pick up our shares? (Covid-19 updates)

We have pickups around the region (and yes, you can switch around where you get your veggies).

Pickups are listed below with our "normal" times. We may have to adjust these a bit around the current situation, but we will be reaching out to you all if any changes are occuring.

Pickups include:

Tuesdays from:

• 2:30 to 7pm in Fayetteville, off Rt. 5 near Green Lakes and Four Seasons
• 2:30 to 7pm in Manlius, location TBD (first week will likely be delivered)
• 3 to 7pm in Syracuse, Westcott neighborhood
• on farm after 2 by request

Friday at the farm from 4 to 7pm

Saturday at the Cazenovia Farmers Market from 9am to 2pm

+ How does picking up the share work?

We will be there for the first week to say hi and provide a pickup orientation!

Generally for pickup, you:

• Show up at your site during the pickup window
• Check your name off the check-in list, which also tells you what size shares you are getting (make sure to remind friends or partners who are picking up for you about this so they can get the right share size too!)
• Look around for any extra notes—we usually include a list of what’s in the share and sometimes have other special notes up as well
• We would prefer to not send the boxes home this year with folks so we can keep them extra clean! Carefully open the box… the wax boxes we use are deceptively hard to open without tearing. Remember to slide the tabs out using the folds and not pull up on the lids, or they will break!
• Take out your veggies and transfer to your coolers or bags. This year we are starting to use plastic liner bags for the boxes, which you can take as well and repurpose as trash bags! For returning members wondering about why we added these, it’s in part to make sure the veggies stay clean in transport, but also because we felt like veggies on the tops of the boxes were getting a bit tired and dried out. These bags should help trap in more coolness and protect the leafy greens from the wind.
• Leave your box at the site. There is no need to break down your box if you find it challenging—our hosts can help with this to save the boxes!
• If you are splitting a share (which is totally fine), please just send one partner to get the share this year. We normally provide space to split shares at the site, but don't feel like we can do this safely this season.

+ What if I can’t make it to pick up my box a particular day/week—switches and deadlines!

Members can definitely switch sites and put shares on hold. How this works best right now is if you [[go to this form] and fill it out on what day you will be gone or in a different place, and what alternative works best for you.

For Tuesday shareholders, please submit any changes by midnight on Sunday.

For Friday or Saturday shareholders, please submit any changes by midnight on Weds.

If you need to make changes after those deadlines, please contact us directly by email or text.

+ How does a vacation hold work?

For going on vacation, you can choose to have someone get your share for you at the regular pickup (you don’t need to let us know or fill anything out for this—just make sure your substitute knows where and how to get the box!), or you can put your share on hold.

If you put your share on hold, you have the choice to either donate the veggies or to get a makeup box at some other point. For large shares, this makeup box will be two large boxes. For small shares, we assume you would prefer a large share as your makeup box. If you would rather get two small boxes, make sure to note this when you fill out the vacation hold form! Please note, you don’t have to get your makeup share right when you get back from vacation, you can request this share at the end of the season (when we have more storage veggies in the boxes) or for a week when you have a full house.

+ How does a site swap work?

You fill out the same form to let us know what change you want to make! Please note that there is a bit more flexibility to swap sites at the farm (as we have big coolers here to keep all the veggies fresh easier). If you think you need a permanent site swap or want to set up a rotation, that’s fine, just shoot us an email and we can make it happen.

+ What if I don’t like something—how to use the Swap Basket?

Each site has a swap basket that starts off with a handful of vegetables. It’s there for you to swap something out that perhaps you don’t like for something you like more. So if you hate lettuce, you can put your lettuce into the basket and in exchange take out something else. Also, if you just think you won’t eat all the veggies in your share for a particular week, you can leave those in the swap basket as well. Please don’t raid the swap basket without trading in an item.

Alternately, sometimes we have extra bounties of things, or crops that would be “seconds” but that members might enjoy more of (giant zucchinis would be an example of this). We will sometimes bring these extras or seconds to our remote sites—these will be identified by a sign. We also often have seconds at our Friday pickup, so if you are U-Picking at the farm from another site, feel free to stop by the tent to say hi and help yourself to any seconds/extras.

+ How can I check my balance or make a payment?

We are using Square invoicing this year, and will automatically send you balance notices and payment reminders. Please shoot us an email at info@hartwoodfarm.com to check your balance if you haven't received one within a day or two from signing up.

To make a payment right now, you can mail checks anytime to Hartwood Farm, 5258 Irish Ridge Rd, Chittenango, NY 13037, or drop one off at the Cazenovia Farmers Market. Alternately, email us at info@hartwoodfarm.com and we can send you a credit card payment link.

+ I forgot to pickup, what do I do now?

It depends on your site. We really appreciate our great hosts and their help and flexibility in helping connect our veggies to all of you! If you forget a share, please call, email, or text us right away and we can work to connect you with it.

After we drop off all the shares, we directly return to the farm, so we can’t go get any un-picked up shares and bring them back to the farm for you or save them for the next week. In Fayetteville, Manlius, and Syracuse, our sites are at private members’ homes, and our great hosts are often able to leave forgotten shares outside their garages for late pickup or pickup the next day if you let us or them know (the quality won’t be the best on the greens if they sit out on a hot day, though, just as a warning!). At the farm, forgetting a share is not a big deal, we just put it in our coolers and it can live there until you come get it. Farm pickups can also text us to bring their shares to the Cazenovia market the next day.

+ How does U-Picking work?

U-picking is part of all shares (it’s included in the price), and we hope that you are able to make it out to the farm a few times this summer! This year's U-Pick is pretty flower-focused, with some additional cherry tomatoes, husk cherries, and herbs. While you are welcome to stroll around the U-Pick gardens from the first pickup, we won’t officially open them until the flowers start coming in (usually mid-July).

U-picking is officially open Tuesday and Friday afternoons from 3pm to dusk. Other hours are fine by appointment (just shoot us an email if you want to come some other time), we just may not be there other times. We will have signs and maps of where the flowers and veggies are, as well as guidelines on how to harvest them. We also have new fabric walkways for much of the garden, so it will be easier to get around! More U-pick details will be coming…

+ Will I know in advance what’s in my share?

CSA newsletters are sent out by email on Sunday or Monday... so, yes, you will have a sense in advance what vegetables are coming each week. Newsletters also contain recipes to help plan out meals/shopping around the vegetables in the share. However, since we are somewhat on nature’s schedule, we aren’t always correct in our estimates—so there can always be some surprise element to the share! We do post pictures of our shares mid-day on Tuesdays, so you will have an idea of what is in your boxes a few hours in advance!

+ Can I cancel my share and get a refund?

Yes, please don't worry if CSA ends up not working for you - we totally understand that things are crazy sometimes, and you can cancel your share anytime. Please call or email and we can set this up. Before the season starts, we offer full refunds less any credit card fees (about 3%) for balances paid. During the season, refunds are offered on a prorated basis, less card fees.

+ Are there Covid-19 related changes to the CSA? (2022 Note: This is super outdated info from 2020 - leaving it here just so you have a sense of the steps we would take if rates ramp up/things change!)

(ALL 2020 info!) Yes, we are going to make some changes for this summer to better keep our employees, our members, and our food all safe.

The CSA is going to mostly be similar to past years, but we do have a few details more up in the air now. We will be updating these on this member page as the distribution season draws near.

We are assuming that social distancing may still be a thing (at an on again/off again capacity at least) for the bulk of the CSA season. From a farming perspective, it just means we have to approach tasks a bit differently, so that we don’t all end up wedged together in tight quarters. (Essentially, it means that Matt and I will get to spend ALL our time together doing any multi-person tasks, which we normally split up in teams with our crew for.)

The off-areas we anticipate possible changes to the CSA are pickup sites, handling the boxes and recycle/reuse, and the U-Pick garden.

We are pretty sure that the safest distribution option will be staffing pickup sites (with plenty of handwashing) until NY reaches stage 3 of reopening. On one hand, this makes the logistics a bit more challenging to cover all of the sites, but on the other hand, it means that you will get to see one of us every week, so there will be a space to ask more questions about using the veggies and recipe ideas and the like!

The second change is that we can't safely reuse pint/quart containers or bags this year. We know that transmission through paper is low, but it just doesn't seem worth the risk at this time. We were also planning on cutting back on plastic bags this year, but that isn’t able to happen due to Covid safety. At the sites, we are going to have handwashing and sanitizing stations set up, and then we can take the bag out and give it to you when you get there, so that we can reuse the boxes at least.

Finally, the two CSA things that are a bit up in the air are the U-Pick garden and swap baskets, as they both involve a lot more people handling the produce. For the U-Pick, we are still planting for it, and will play it by ear as the summer approaches (maybe we rotate some flowers through every site a few weeks?). We will be relying on guidance recommendations about opening it from NYS Department of Ag and the Cornell Produce Safety Alliance.

We also aren’t sure if we can safely do the swap basket this year, but we are brainstorming options. Hopefully by early June there will be an expanded set of guidance for farms to follow (so far, NYS has been incredibly helpful reaching out to help farms manage around Covid).

One positive change for this summer is that we are setting up a formal online ordering system. This will go live in early May, right around the start of the farmers market season, and will have our full catalog of what’s getting harvested (or plant starts, which we are growing more of, hence the overstuffed greenhouse). This will let folks order specific items for pre-order to pickup either at the market or farm, or for CSA members, at your CSA site. So if there’s something you really like you can order more (eg, some folks want more greens, or bulk tomatoes or the like).

Switching to a system like this designed around farms is kind of a big deal for us (for long-time members, you may have noticed our struggle with finding technology that works for both us and for you :). We are optimistic about how this will let us try some things out that we haven't been able to do before (specifically, pre-orders that we could maybe expand to 2021 CSA shares, and expanded delivery options).

We know that this is a crazy time for your households too, and are trying to do what we can to make the CSA easier. On this front, we are moving to a 20 to 22 week period to receive your shares in this year. What this means is that the shares are 18 weeks of boxes, starting in mid-June and generally running to early/mid-October. If you don’t make changes, that’s what your CSA season will be. However, we wanted to make sure that everyone can easily skip some weeks if you need to for whatever reason.

We also can work with you for changing payment plans, share sizes, and more (and we understand that your plans or situation changes during the season). We are still figuring out the ways that we will handle all this, but for the meantime you can just email or call us if you need to switch anything around. We also understand that folks might have bigger changes happen this year, and we can offer refunds (pro-rated if the season has already begun) if you need.

Keep checking here (and in your inbox for our CSA newsletters for more updates, and we so look forward to starting shares in June!