How Our CSA Works
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How We Will Grow Your Food: At Devon Point Farm, all of our vegetables and flowers are naturally field grown using only OMRI® listed products and only when absolutely necessary. OMRI® is the “Organic Materials Review Institute” that manages the list of products that comply with USDA organic standards. We do not use synthetic fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides. We fertilize with organically-rich compost made from manure from our grassfed cows. We are not “certified organic” simply because we personally don’t agree with how the Federal Government has hijacked the use of the word “organic.” In case you didn’t know, it has become a bureaucratic mess for a small farm to be able to use the word “organic” for marketing purposes and its an unneccessary expense that we just can’t justify. As a Farm Share Member, you must fully understand and be comfortable with the fact that farming is an imperfect science: there will be crop failures due to weather challenges, pest invasions, and bouts with disease. You must anticipate that you will receive a variety of crops, but you may not get every crop that is on our list due to crop failures or low yields. Not all the crops we plant will mature into harvestable share-worthy crops. Those crops will become compost. Shareholders may pick up their shares individually or coordinate with another shareholder to pick up and deliver their share. Shareholders that are unable to pick up their share may send a friend, family member, or neighbor to pick up their share for them (We suggest you pay that friend in vegetables for their help!) We have a strict policy of not letting anyone switch days, with no exceptions. Why? Because an enormous amount of effort goes into growing and harvesting exactly what we need for each pickup day. Everything is planned in advance, then harvested, washed, bundled or bagged, and specifically counted for the number of shareholders we have on each designated share day. We often have to adjust the share contents while in the field once we see the quantity and quality of what we are able to harvest. For example, if we dig up a crop of potatoes, only to find that they are too bug-damaged to share, we will go after another crop in the field. Our job becomes almost impossible if we have a moving target of how much we need to harvest on any given day. The share size that is right for you and your family is a very individual decision. It entirely depends on how many vegetables you consume in any given week. You could use the dollar value as your guide, or you could follow the theory that a ‘half’ share would be more appropriate for a couple with moderate vegetable consumption, or a single vegetarian, while a ‘full’ share would be more appropriate for a family with moderate vegetable consumption, or a vegetarian couple. Keep in mind, that your share contents will be determined by what is maturing in the field, and that if you are a vegetarian, you will likely want to supplement your farm share with other non-seasonal vegetables to round out your eating experience. We use grocery store ‘organic’ vegetable pricing as the yardstick to which our vegetable’s dollar values are measured when we calculate each week’s share value.
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