Am I too late to sign up for this year’s CSA?
Yes, you are. We closed registration for the 2024 CSA season on March 20. All 100 of the 2024 CSA shares are now sold. If you’d like to be added to our 2025 CSA notification list, email us and we’ll make sure you’re sent a notification in February of 2025 reminding you of open registration dates for the upcoming 2025 CSA season.
Do you wash your lettuce?
We double or triple rinse depending on how dirty the lettuce is from the start; however, it is always a good thing to check your own bag before making a salad.
Where are your drop off locations?
If your house falls within our delivery route, we’ll deliver to your front porch. Otherwise, we would need to coordinate with another customer for you to pick up your produce from a different residence or work location.
Are you Certified Organic?
We grow our produce using sustainable and organic farming methods, but because we have not gone through the enormous amounts of paperwork and inspection needed for USDA Certified Organic labeling, we cannot by law label our produce “organic.” Our methods and philosophy are such that the produce is grown in a similar way. We have actually found that we tend to be more careful about using sprays on our produce, more conservative in our views about what we deem acceptable and free of harm to the environment around our plants. Our tendency to take precautions means we put a lot of extra physical work into picking bugs off of plants and hand weeding the gardens, but we think it’s worth the effort!
May I purchase extra produce?
Just add a note in your order form requesting any extra veggies in which you are interested and we will do our best to supply. We will try to let the members know when extras are available for those who like to store food.
What do I do when I’m on vacation?
You may find a friend or neighbor to pick up that week instead, or we can try to supply you with bulk produce later in the season for canning or freezing to make up for the week missed. We need a week’s prior notification of your absence to make that work.
I’m concerned about paying for more produce than I can use. What options do I have?
Beginning this year (2024), rather than increasing our share prices to follow patterns of inflation, we have chosen to decrease the number of weekly vegetable kinds offered in each CSA share. We’ve heard over and over that our members don’t eat as many vegetables as we are used to eating in our household of 12. (Imagine that!) Also new this year, we plan to offer additional options of various farm products (pork sausage, teacup flower bouquets, eggs, and more…) included in the weekly allowed vegetable choices of 5-8 items. These particular farm product choices will vary from week to week and may be worth two allowed vegetable choices but will already be included in the seasonal CSA share price; no extra cost!
Our farm’s Build-Your-Basket option allows you to custom select vegetables online. Each week we allow you a certain number of vegetable choices. You may choose all or fewer, whatever works best for your lifestyle. For example, the order form for week #5 might allow you a maximum of 8 vegetable choices. Let’s say, however, you decide you don’t like all the vegetables on the list and you know you will not have time to cook 2 days that week, so you decide to select only 5 items from the order form instead. That is perfectly fine! Next week you may decide to host a party, and so you choose the maximum number of items allowed for week #6. The Build-Your-Basket share’s key component is flexibility.
I’m a frugal person and $530 seems like a large chunk of money. Do you really think this is a good value?
We think so and here’s why: As a member of our CSA, you will pay LESS THAN $30 PER WEEK for healthy vegetables that are fresher than anything you’ll ever find in a grocery store! Not only that, but you will not have to leave your home to shop for those vegetables; most often, they’ll be delivered to your door. Plus, we’ve purposely kept our prices very competitive. A search for CSA’s in western or northern Michigan will show that Kid Ranch CSA Farm’s CSA prices are lowest when comparing the cost with the variety of vegetables and number of weeks per season. You will be hard-pressed to find another CSA farm with a better value for its product! Besides, our vegetables are grown sustainably, using organic methods. That’s a big plus in our book, and because you’re reading this far, we’re guessing that’s a big deal in your book too!
What vegetables do you grow for your CSA?
Many of the vegetables we grow are pictured individually below. We also grow the following: sweet corn, cantaloupe, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, yellow beans, arugula, zucchini, yellow summer squash, Romaine lettuce, mixed cut leaf lettuces (a regular, milder flavor mix and another one we call zippy mix), cooking onions, garlic, red beets, Chinese cabbage, collards, snow peas, sugar snap peas, and Swiss chard.
***NEW or RETURNING items this year will include parsnips, Asian melons, and yellow bell peppers!***
