Although Community Supported Agriculture was virtually synonymous with “box of vegetables” in its early days, an increasing number of farms are choosing a “market style” distribution in which customers pack their own bags and boxes of produce. We have worked with both distribution methods and chosen to use the market style on our current farm. We have successfully worked through the logistics, and I wanted to share our experience with other farmers for whom it might prove useful for their future or present CSA farms.

When my husband Casey and I started Oakhill Organics CSA, we had already worked on another CSA farm in Bellingham, Washington. There we learned invaluable information about running an effective CSA: how to balance diversity and successive plantings, how to host fun on-farm events, and how to pack and distribute 120-plus boxes of vegetables each week.

When we moved to McMinnville, Oregon, to start on our own, we shaped our farm by jumping off what we had learned in Bellingham. However, we realized early on that the CSA box distribution system might not be the best fit for us in our first year.

As I’ve mentioned in previous GFM articles, we farm with only the two of us for full-time labor. Considering our limited labor, we decided that packing boxes might not be the best use of our time. At the farm in Bellingham, a crew of three or more experienced individuals spent Wednesday mornings packing boxes. Even with only 48 shares our first year, that amount of labor seemed daunting. Plus, the Bellingham farm is blessed with a shady grove of firs, beneath which boxes can be leisurely packed. At the farm we rented that first year, we had no shade trees and limited indoor space in which to pack boxes.

Additionally, we didn’t own a vehicle with space to haul. At the time, we only owned a Honda Civic and hoped to make it through our first season without having to buy a new vehicle. When we did upgrade, we didn’t want to feel forced into buying a much larger volume vehicle than the produce we put in it. CSA boxes are never filled as tightly as single-vegetable packed bins, creating what we saw as packing inefficiency. And, we had seen how trying keeping track of CSA boxes could be. Inevitably, boxes go missing or are damaged — a hassle we wanted to avoid.

With these thoughts in mind, we decided to try out the market style pick-up, which refers to the look of the set-up rather than any difference in the actual CSA concept. Instead of being packed into boxes, the vegetables in each weekly CSA share are displayed market style in bins at a meeting spot, where CSA members go to pack their own bag or box.

Developing a system
The first year, we were renting land a minute’s drive from town, so we decided to do our CSA pick-up there. In order to make the market style pick-up work, we realized we needed a clearly defined pick-up time window (in our case, Tuesdays, 3:30 – 6:30), so we included information about where and when the pick-up would be in our CSA brochures.

For pick-up at the farm, we built a simple shed roof building that provided shade and weather protection, under which we set up our folding market tables in a line. We put the freshly harvested and washed produce out in bins and baskets and attached a market-style price sign to each bin — rather than indicating a price, the signs identified the vegetable in the bin (in case it was unfamiliar) and indicated how many/much each member should take (e.g. “Lettuce – 1 head”).

We took the time to make sure each vegetable item was already somewhat itemized: we bunched greens and weighed loose items like peas and beans into plastic produce bags. By having everything itemized, members in a hurry could pick-up their share quickly without waiting in line to use a scale. We encouraged members to bring their own bins or bags for the produce, but we provided extra plastic bags, just in case.

Evolving the system
Even though we moved our farm farther from town the next year, we decided to keep using the market style distribution method. We chose a new pick-up spot at a church located near our town’s downtown, convenient enough that many of our members walk or bike to pick up their shares. In exchange for letting us set up in their parking lot Tuesday afternoons, we supply the church with a free share for one of their members.
Our set-up has remained mostly the same, except we now erect our 10 x 20 market canopy each week for shade. We store our ‘back stock’ of vegetables at the back of the canopy, and we stand behind the tables, so we can easily continually refill the front bins and weigh out produce into bags.

We also instituted a clearer pick-up directional flow by having CSA members clearly check in with me at one end of the table and then move to the other end. We arrange the vegetable bins in an appropriate bag filling order: heaviest, sturdy vegetables come first and leafy greens come later. The weekly paper newsletter comes last, where people can easily grab it once their hands are free from packing vegetables.

After realizing that people gravitate towards the largest produce in any bin, I started labeling items to help remind people to take a range of sized items: “Leeks – 3 of varying size.” The gentle reminder works. Also, we were going through a lot of grocery bags because people were forgetting to bring their own, so I designed tote bags with our farm name on them, which we sell at cost to our CSA members.

Our CSA runs 45 weeks of the year, and we decided last year to continue the market style pick-up even into the dark and rainy months. Knowing we couldn’t continue meeting outside past October, we moved the pick-up into the county’s food bank warehouse, conveniently located just down the street from the church’s parking lot. It’s a perfect location: dry, well-lit, big enough to accommodate our three folding tables, and has a concrete floor that is easy to clean if vegetable bits drop during pick-up. In exchange for use of the space, we donate all our leftover produce from the CSA to the food bank year-round.

Unexpected benefits
Our market style vegetable distribution system has met all of our original goals of time and space efficiency. Even though we spend four hours setting up, staffing, and taking down the pick-up each week, we still feel that the process is less work and stress than packing boxes and distributing them around town for our current 90 shares. Further, we can continue to add more shares without adding time to our distribution process.

But perhaps even more significantly, the pick-up itself has become a wonderful event, a weekly community gathering for everyone involved in the CSA, something we hadn’t fully anticipated. We live in a small community, and many of our members have friends participating as well. People often end up deep in conversation off to the side during pick-up.

Since we’re continually restocking front bins and weighing produce, Casey and I are present for the entire pick-up period. We have lots of time to chat with CSA members and know everyone by name and what’s going on in their lives. Since it is just the two of us on the farm, we value time to visit with our farm’s wider community. The CSA members enjoy picking their farmers’ brains each week about recipe ideas and the business of farming.
As farmers, we also receive instant feedback about the quality and quantity of vegetables each week. If people love or hate something, they tell us, and we adjust the contents of shares based on the continual flow of feedback through the season. At this point in our farm’s career, most of the feedback is positive, and the praise provides a needed boost when we’re in the middle of summer challenges.

The pick-up has also become a fun weekly event for families — kids love picking out the vegetables for their family’s share, and the bin signs offer real-life lessons in reading, naming and counting. Many parents have reported that their children are interested in vegetables for the first time after participating in the CSA pick-up.
Another aspect of the pick-up that has worked very well is the added factor of choice. The signs we place on each bin indicate what each member may take, but they don’t have to either. Most CSA members take everything — but if someone detests beets, for example, she can offer them to someone else or leave them knowing they will go to the food bank at the end of the day.

Similarly, we’ve eliminated the waste and guilt that can occur when CSA members forget to pick up their shares. At the end of each pick-up session, we can immediately address any leftover produce, which we donate that same day to the food bank. We inform our CSA members of this practice, so that they can feel okay about forgetting every now and then. And rather than keeping track of who’s out of town, we tell members to either offer their share to a friend or just leave it to be donated — a simple solution to the summer vacation problem.

Potential challenges & disadvantages
Although we love our CSA distribution system, the market style pick-up can also pose some unique challenges. Offering a tight three-hour window for pick-up each week will always exclude potential members who just can’t make it there during that time. So far, we haven’t had a problem filling shares, but this limitation could be a problem for another farm.

The second challenge is that our distribution occurs away from the farm. If we miscount during harvest, we cannot go pick more vegetables. Accidentally running out of an item has only happened a few times, and fortunately our members are gracious enough to accept offers of other vegetables in place of the missing one. But, we also now always pick at least one extra of every bunched item, and count everything twice before leaving the fields.

The final challenge is simply finding the right location, especially if your farm is too far away for easy member access each week. We’ve been lucky to find good in-town locations — the church parking lot for summer and food bank for winter — but we’ve had to be very careful in our choices.

Our priorities for a market style pick-up location are: convenience for us (can we easily park our truck and unload bins?), convenience for our members (can they find a parking spot? is it close to their daily life and routine?), safety (will traffic flow be clearly marked? is there space out of the way of cars for kids to play? in winter, will the space be well lit?), space (can we comfortably set up all our tables and bins?), weather protection (will we have shade in summer? wind and rain protection in winter?) and appropriateness (will any mess created by the vegetables be ok in this location?).

We started our CSA using the market style distribution model from the beginning, and it has become a defining element of our members’ CSA experience; however, transitioning an existing CSA community to this method could be tricky. But for CSA farmers seeking to streamline their system or increase weekly interactions with members, I definitely recommend giving it consideration.

For us, the benefits of the market style CSA distribution vastly outweigh any remaining challenges to us as farmers — we feel that the efficiency and simplicity of our system is topped only by the unexpected pleasure of seeing our farm’s community every week.

Katie Kulla and her husband Casey operate Oakhill Organics in Dayton, Oregon. You can read more about their adventures in farming on their farm blog: www.oakhillorganics.org/blog.html. Katie can be reached via email: farm@oakhillorganics.org.