CSA Membership FAQ

Yes! We offer a 25% discount to vegetarians and a 50% discount to vegans.

Unfortunately, we no longer deliver. Members pick up right here at the farm in Essex, New York. We are a 40-minute drive south of Plattsburgh, New York, and within reach of most towns in the eastern region of the Adirondack Park. We’re only one mile from the ferry across Lake Champlain from Essex to Charlotte, Vermont, and have several wonderful members who come to us from Vermont.

Our staffed, fully-stocked distribution hours are Friday, from 3pm - 7pm, but you are welcome to come for your share on Saturday or Sunday, or stop by the farm to pick up the basics any day. Most of our members come on Friday afternoons, turning the pavilion into a kind of neighbor check-in / social hour. Mark often cooks up a little member snack (what we call ‘distro bistro’), with ingredients we harvested that week.

Kind of! A membership gives you access to a whole diet of seasonal vegetables, herbs, and fruits plus meats, dairy, grains, eggs, and some value-added products, in any weekly combination that you choose. You can think of our CSA as a grocery store, made up of whole food seasonal ingredients. Most folks are used to having a local CSA share to supplement their weekly grocery hauls. We encourage our members to think of the grocery store as a “sometimes” supplement to our full diet membership. 

If you are out of town for 2 consecutive weeks or more, we can apply the value of the weeks you are gone to the Essex Farm Food Fund, to help bridge the gap between the full share price and what members of modest means can afford. You help support your neighbors, and you get a tax deduction for the donation. For extended absences, please email us to make arrangements to put your membership on hold.

Unlike a typical CSA, where the farm pre-determines the type and quantity of food each member receives, you get to choose what and how much to take. We put some limits on scarce or in-demand items and ask you not to give, sell or hoard the high-value items; we ask you not to feed your pets from the farm. Otherwise, it’s up to you. Take whatever you want to eat this week. 

• While the winter selection of vegetables is delicious, we encourage our members to take extra summer vegetables to freeze or can for winter if they wish to eat them year-round. 

• Some of our items - cherry tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries - are pick-your-own, but we supply a generous amount of them for people not physically able to do it. 

• Each week, produce is labeled with a corresponding color card. 

  • Green means abundant. Eat with abandon and put some up for the winter if you like. Most of our produce is marked green, most of the year. 

  • Yellow means somewhat limited supply. Take enough to make you happy but don’t go nuts, leave some for other people. 

  • Red means limited availability. Take enough for one meal. 

Throwing parties, cooking for friends and having houseguests are expected and included in your membership. 

Every week, Kristin sends out a “grocery list” saying what will be available that week along with weekly farm news, important intel, etc.

To make our unique full diet model work, our CSA membership is year-round, and we require a full term of commitment. Membership agreements are twelve months from signup. Seasonal residents are welcome to email us to hear about special arrangements.

We are happy to be able to subsidize a limited number of memberships for people of modest means through a Donor Advised Fund (DAF) that was founded for this purpose. Support depends on the funds available, so if you’d like to join but can’t quite swing it, email us and we’ll see what we can do. If you’re interested in making a tax-deductible donation to the fund, please contact us.