Membership Information

Red Springs Family Farm

Community Supported Agriculture

Membership Information

Here’s what you need to know about your vegetable deliveries.

We commit to a twenty week season of deliveries, with an Autumn extension for those who love the cool weather crops. When you register, we anticipate that you will remain with us for the entire season. Please give us notice if you need to withdraw.

Deliveries are each Thursday throughout the season.

We will be at the Cookeville Farmer’s Market Pavilion (1^st and Mahler) from 4 to 6 pm.

At the pick up, you can help us break the bag habit by bringing your own bags, baskets, or coolers to hold your veggies. We will also be glad to take your clean used plastic grocery bags to re-use.

If you foresee that you will be out of town or unable to make it to a pick up, please let us know as soon as possible. The best thing you can do is reach out to a friend or neighbor and share your veggies with them that week. If no one is available to take your basket, then you can also choose to donate it to the Genesis House Women’s Shelter (www.genesishouseinc.com). We need at least day’s notice to let them know to pick up. If it is a great financial hardship for you to lose a basket, we will work with you to credit the value of that basket forward into the season. This is our last preference, as it makes more paperwork and recordkeeping for us. We’d rather be in the garden.

Veggies: All of our veggies are field grown and will likely contain some grit, insects or possibly other stuff that you are likely to find outdoors. Please wash your veggies to remove anything that you don’t want to eat. We will sometimes include specific vegetable storage information in the weekly newsletters.

Besides the selection of veggies grown here at home, we’re glad to be forming partnerships with a couple of other local producers. Seasonal organic berries will be available starting at the end of June through Hidden Springs Orchard (www.hiddenspringsorchard.com), and artisanal cheese will be available by order on the first pick up of each month from Kenny’s Country Cheese (www.kennyscheese.com). Consider your fruit and cheese needs and think about making a standing order, if that’s appropriate for your household.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a concept used to help people connect with food, farms, and farmers. Each CSA is as individual as its farm and growers. No two are alike, and there many ways to organize and coordinate them.

As your growers, we keep open doors to you. You, the eaters, are our best organic inspectors, our best critics, and hopefully our biggest fans. You are always welcome to visit the farm (please give us notice so we can be sure to be home). We live simply. Our home is off-the-grid, small, and integrally intertwined with our working lives. There’s a lovely creek to cool off and play in flowing right by, and Lulah is always glad to have company (bring the kids!). We love to share a cup of tea and slice of life with you.

We also do our very best to inform you about our practices and experiences in the field. Each year, each season, is different. There are usually great crop successes, and a few failures as well. When you sign up for a CSA, you agree to ride the waves of the season, accepting the ebbs and flows of the harvest as they come, as if this is a garden that you have grown yourself.

Though we have, so far, maintained a method of valuing each basket of produce, we do not think of you as week-to-week customers, and we hope you will begin to think of your food seasonally as well. Your food is yours from seed to flower, while it’s in the ground, growing, and waiting for you to pick it up at the market. You pay to keep the farm growing, and we bring you dividends in the form of the farm’s produce each week.

Payment options for your CSA membership are flexible. We ask for a quarterly (5 weeks) payment up front. This is $100 ($20 per week) for a smaller share, or $150 ($30 per week) for a larger share. You may also pay for the entire season in one lump sum. If neither of these options fits your budget, we will still work with you. We ask that you stay at least one week ahead in payments. This way, you have an incentive to pick up your food, and we have “crop insurance” in the form of your investment. We will keep track of your attendance and send a reminder when your next payment is due.

Thank you for participating in this year’s harvest. We look forward to sharing the season with you. Please give us feedback so we can grow an open conversation around this good food.