Questions
The five we get every February.
- What is actually in a share in June compared with September?
- June is salad, spinach, radishes, spring onions, and — for two weeks — garlic scapes. Seven items on a good week and it is all green. September is tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, corn, beans, potatoes, onions, and the first winter squash, and it is eleven items and heavy. The week-by-week chart shows all twenty-two weeks so you can see exactly when each thing starts.
- What if I am away for two weeks?
- Tell us the week before. We will either hold the share for you to collect on a later week, or give it to the food pantry in your name — most people choose the pantry. What we cannot do is refund the week, because the seed for it went in the ground in March.
- Can I choose what I get?
- Not at Rhinebeck or Beacon, where boxes are packed before we drive down. At the farm on Wednesdays there is a swap table, and you can trade anything in your box for anything on it. It is the main reason people pick the farm site.
- Where and when do I pick up?
- Kingston at the farm on Wednesdays, 3 to 7. Rhinebeck behind the community hall on Thursdays, 4 to 7. Beacon behind the bakery on Thursdays, 4:30 to 7:30. You choose one site for the season, and you can change it once mid-season if your life does.
- What happens in a bad year?
- You get a smaller box, and we tell you why. That is the arrangement — a CSA share is a share in the season rather than a standing grocery order, and the risk runs both ways. In a good year the box is enormous and nobody complains about the arrangement then either.