Am I too late to sign up for this year’s CSA?
No, you aren’t. Registration will open for the general public on March 1, while last year’s CSA members will be allowed to register a week or two before that date. We have a limit of 120 shares and typically our CSA shares sell out by the beginning of May (sometimes sooner). If you’d like to be added to our 2026 CSA notification list, email us and we’ll make sure you’re sent a notification at the end of February of 2026, reminding you of open registration dates for the upcoming 2026 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. Typically, though, any immediate bulk produce is brought to the Manistee Farmers Market on Saturdays.
What do I do when I’m on vacation?
You may find a friend or neighbor to pick up that week instead. If your neighbor or friend lives within our delivery route, we will most likely be able to deliver directly to their house instead of yours during the week(s) you will be gone from home. However, we do 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?
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. Just like previous years, this year’s CSA shares include additional options of various farm products (our own farm pastured meats, teacup flower bouquets, eggs, and more) included in the weekly allowed ‘vegetable’ choices of 5-9 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!
Both the Build-Your-Basket Share and the Half Share allow 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, one of them being a roll of pork sausage (worth 2 of your 8 allowable choices) that you can store in your freezer to save for another week. 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 (and then haul out that pork sausage you saved in the freezer the week before). The Build-Your-Basket Share’s key component is flexibility.
I’m a frugal person and $600 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 $34 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; they’ll be delivered to your door! No extra driving. That’s one less “to do” item on your list of errands. Plus, we’ve purposely kept our prices very competitive. A search for CSA farms in western or northern Michigan will show that Kid Ranch CSA Farm’s CSA prices are highly competitive when comparing the cost with the variety of farm products, number of weeks per season, and the fact that our vegetables are grown using organic methods and our meats are from pastured animals. You will be hard-pressed to find another CSA farm with a better value for its product! Again, 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, Asian melons, yellow bell peppers, and parsnips.
