All About CSA!

May 25, 2022

Hello! You've got Vanessa this week, talking all about ways to increase the amount of vegetables in your day. One way is by subscribing to a CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture. For those who aren’t familiar I want to briefly describe the concept.

A CSA Farm Share is essentially a subscription to a weekly harvest. You enter into an agreement to receive a weekly delivery of fresh, local, seasonal produce for the duration of the growing season, which in KY is about 20-22 weeks, and generally May to October. Payment for the produce subscription is requested upfront for the entire season which provides the farms with guaranteed working capital for the growing season, although many farms do offer payment plans so if that is important to you, you can look for farms that do that.

As a CSA member you are buying into the farm and you become a shareholder. This means that you share the inherent risks of farming, including dealing with weather, pests, and other unexpected circumstances BUT it also means that you benefit from being the number one priority when it comes to enjoying the bounty of their weekly harvest. Farms set aside your produce and/or pack your boxes first before they bring produce to market. Other benefits include:

Convenient pickups near work or home
Know your farmer and how your food is grown
Ensure food dollars are kept in your community
Opportunity to try new foods and test new recipes

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These photos are examples of seasonal shares from a few of our partner farms and organizations. The variety of items you can expect to see will change from farm to farm as well as during the growing season, but we do have item lists of typical June shares under each farm description on our program website. You can use this as a general idea, but keep in mind this is not exact as there are a lot of variables that can affect a weekly harvest.

We are excited to partner with 11 farms this year: Barr Farm, Black Soil KY, Elmwood Stock Farm, Hickory Grove Farm, HomeGrown Direct LLC, Lazy Eight Stock Farm, Old Homeplace Farm, Rolling Fork Organic Farm, Rootbound Farm, Sustainable Harvest Farm and the UK Organic Farming Unit. You're eligible to participate in this program if you are an employee on a UK health plan*.

Interested? Here's the "bottom line":

Choose a $100 or $200 amount depending on preferred share size.
Claim a voucher on the UK H&W Dashboard by 4 PM on May 6th.
Choose a partner farm, CSA share size, and convenient pick-up option for the season.
Purchase a share by May 9th at 11:59 PM.
All participants must enter their linkblue ID and voucher code at signup.
Subscribe to UK HW blog for recipes ideas and tips during the season.

*Voucher benefit is taxable income and will be reported on your W-2.