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Our CSATime to sign up for the 2012 CSA season, including the 2012-13 winter shares. Download our 2012 CSA Sign-up Form fill it out and send it in. If you have questions, feel free to email or call us.Check out our CSA Blog and get an idea of what our CSA has been like over the last few seasons. www.lunableufarm.blogspot.com
Share the Harvest | Work Shares | Share Types | What Do You Get
What is a CSAIn a CSA, farmers and shareholders share in both the risks and bounty of the season. By joining, members support local agriculture and invest in the local economy. Members know where their food comes from and how it is grown. Connecting with the land and the people who grow the food helps to build a healthier community. Both the farmers and CSA members benefit.By joining Luna Bleu Farm CSA you will experience full flavored produce. We grow varieties for their delicious flavor, not for shipping qualities. Many of our members have told us that they really have changed to a more healthful diet when they joined our CSA. Even kids like our vegetables. One mother told me that her children ate all the spinach from the bag before they got home from the farm! CSA members typically pay for a share of the harvest before the start of the growing season. Members receive fresh, organic vegetables weekly from June to October, and may also choose to receive winter crops from November to May. In addition, CSA members can purchase special meat shares and egg shares. You and your neighbors can help transform the economics of local agriculture. CSA begins to redefine the economics of farming. With CSA the price of our food better reflects the actual cost of production and the true value of sustainable agriculture while keeping local farms healthy. It is a quiet revolution, but an exciting one!
Share TypesHarvest Season ShareHarvest season shareholders enjoy a weekly share of fresh vegetables during the growing season, mid-June to mid-October. Shares include many types of greens, tomatoes, fennel, summer and winter squash, melons, cucumbers, herbs, and more.Winter You-Store Share Winter you-store shareholders receive a bulk quantity of vegetables, including carrots, potatoes, onions, beets, cabbage, winter squash, and garlic at the end of October to store through the winter. Winter Farm-Stored ShareWinter farm-stored shareholders receive the same vegetables, but they are stored on the farm for pick-up once a month, from November to May. As a bonus, we add greenhouse-grown greens and early spring crops as weather permits. We can also bring your winter boxes to the Norwich Winter Market for an extra fee.
Additional Share Types
Meat ShareThanks to the idea of one of our apprentices, we now have a meat share. On the first CSA day of each month, Meat Share members will receive a variety our frozen organic beef, veal, pork, and chicken. The meat share lasts for four months. This is a great way to guarantee you are getting certified organic meat and at a very fair price. It helps us know we have a guaranteed market once a month for a variety of our meat. This is offered to shareholders who pickup at the farm or get their share delivered.
Egg ShareWe also have an egg share for our CSA members. Each week harvest season shareholders can receive a dozen organic eggs. In addition to having a box of fresh vegetables, you can know you will have a dozen organic eggs each week. This share runs as long as the Harvest Season share.
Share SizesSmall share: Feeds one to two adults who eat an average amount of vegetables, or who have a small garden of their own. Medium share: Feeds two vegetarians or two adults who are good vegetable eaters, or a family of 3-4 average eaters. Large share: Feeds 4-5 adults who are good vegetable eaters. Pickup sites include Luna Bleu Farm, South Strafford, Sharon, Randolph, Hanover, Norwich, Lebanon, and White River Junction. What Do You Get?No two years are the same, but expect a typical season to start in June with lettuce, salad greens, broccoli, scallions, spinach, rhubarb,bok choi, and kohlrabi. In July, enjoy cucumbers, summer squash, new potatoes, carrots, green beans and fresh garlic. In August, tomatoes, peppers, onions, eggplant, chard and melons are abundant. In September, the warm days of late summer keep the heat-loving crops producing, while cool nights bring out the sweetness of broccoli and salad greens. In October, kale, cauliflower, and winter squash reach their peak flavor and root vegetables like carrots, beets and potatoes just keep coming! So the season goes.... Share the Harvest--- subsidized sharesWe are strongly committed to making the food we raise available to members of the community in a wide range of economic situations. Luna Bleu participates in the Farm Share Program sponsored by the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA-VT). Contributions are collected to help pay for CSA shares, enabling us to provide vegetable shares to low-income families for half price. You can help to share the Luna Bleu harvest with other members of the community by donating to the Farm Share Program. Follow the directions on our CSA Membership Form or contact NOFA-VT to make a donation to Luna Bleu's fund. Contributions to Farm Share are tax-deductible and every cent goes toward low-income shares. Any sized donation helps. You may also make a donation to the NOFA general farm share fund to help any CSA farm provide subsidized shares. To apply for a subsidized share please fill out the 2012 Farm Share application and send it directly to NOFA-VT. Please also fill out our CSA Membership Form and let us know that you are applying for a NOFA Farm Share. Winter shares now require a separate Farm Share application. Since people sign up with our farm for the winter shares much earlier than that application is available, we will help you through this process. Feel free to contact us if you have more questions about the farm share program. You can also go to Nofa Vt's website and learn more about Farm Share Work SharesWork Shares are available to anyone willing to help with whatever needs doing. In exchange members receive a reduced cost for a share. Work Share is not limited to field work, as many talents are needed on a diversified farm. If you are interested, please contact us.
*A note about the pricing of our shares....*We started something new in 2007. As you know costs have been rising steadily and yet we are always a little slow to raise our prices. I think we have probably been one of the least expensive CSAs around. That's not necessarily a good thing. Many would say we are under priced. We strive to make our CSA affordable to all. The Farm Share Program is a great way for us to offer half-priced shares for low-income members or folks facing temporary difficult circumstances, but we are also very conscious of the people who might not qualify for Farm Share and have a tight budget. Being on the low-income side of life ourselves, we have maybe erred on keeping prices low to our own detriment. It is of course important for the farm to be sustainable. For that to happen, the farmers and all who work with us need to be fairly compensated. This is not an easy thing to do in a culture and economy of cheap food. So anyway, in an effort to try to balance our prices with farm sustainability and broad community affordability we have a sliding scale pricing structure. You are offered three price choices for each type of share. Pick the one that seems most comfortable to you. You decide. No pressure. Really. It is not as radical as it could have been I suppose, but we wanted to try it out and get your feedback.
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