What is a CSA? In general it means supporting local farmers…

Community Supported Agriculture or "CSA" is a term that has come to represent a range of direct farm marketing programs where community members support their local farm by purchasing a share of the season’s produce. Traditionally customers pay upfront for a set amount of vegetables over a given period of time, which is how we ran our Harvest Box program for the first nine years. For the 2022 season however, we’ve asked ourselves how can we give our customers more flexibility?

We’re excited to announce that we’ve found a way! This season we will not be offering our Harvest Box program as before, rather we will be working with the Cowichan Milk Company to offer you a wide array of produce through their home delivery system… that has tons of flexibility, including:

Customization:
Each week you can choose what produce to order (although you do have the option of setting up a recurring order to ensure you get your weekly “staples”). There is also no weekly commitment, so if you’re going to be away just put your order on hold that week.

Variety:
In addition to our produce you can order items from other local farms and producers including eggs, cheese, milk, meat, fruit, bread, preserves and more! The Cowichan Milk Company works primarily with Cowichan producers and a few from elsewhere on Vancouver Island- they truly offer the best of our local food scene!

Convenience:
Ordering through the Cowichan Milk Company is easy! Setting up an account is simple and you don’t even have to order milk… All you have to do is meet their order minimum and they’ll deliver to your door (and they deliver year-round)! Last, there is no upfront payment, just pay as you go.

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As a family with young children, we’ve been ordering dairy and other products from the Cowichan Milk Company since they started and we love the convenience, as well as the quality and freshness of all their products. We also love supporting another local family farm, and now we are so please to be working with them to offer home delivery of our produce. When it came to making this decision we realized the Cowichan Milk Company is already offering the gold standard of CSA’s: it’s free-choice, full-diet, no commitment, pay-as-you-go, delivered to your door, and year-round!

As a small farm we could never offer all that convenience and flexibility, so in the end it was an obvious choice for us to transition our old-fashioned CSA over to working with the Cowichan Milk Company. And although we’ll miss seeing you at the weekly pick-ups (Maple will miss seeing, and sniffing, you too!), we hope the convenience of home delivery and year-round availability will make up for it. And with our Wednesday afternoons freed up, we’ll be able to spend more time doing what we do best- growing delicious, healthy, organic vegetables of the highest quality for our local community!

FAQs:

What if I don’t drink milk, can I still order your produce?
Yes! To order from the Cowichan Milk Company all you have to do is meet their order minimum and there is a wide range of products (in addition to dairy) to choose from. There is also a small delivery fee, but we feel it’s well worth the convenience. To find out more about the order minimum and delivery fee, please see the Cowichan Milk Company website: www.cowichanmilk.ca/how-it-works

Will your produce be available year round?
Yes… or close to yes. We will be offering a wide array of produce through the Cowichan Milk Company including our different salad blends, beets, tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, peppers, and our beloved carrots! And while we won’t have tomatoes available in December, we will have various vegetables available throughout the year. By making this switch we hope to have more time to grow produce for a year-round supply, including carrots for winter as well as more late and early season greens.

Is it organic?
All vegetables produced on our farm are organic. We are fully certified through the Island Organic Producers Association. This means we use no chemical sprays, fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides, nor GMOs. In fact we use all Certified Organic seed wherever possible. Furthermore we must demonstrate our efforts to actively build our soil, protect our water, and uphold the natural biodiversity on our farm. We are audited annually to ensure we are doing these things and adhering to the Canadian Organic Standards. If you have any questions about organic agriculture and why we choose to certify our farm, we would be happy to talk more about it with you- just ask us!

If you have any other questions about ordering through the Cowichan Milk Company or to sign up, please see their website: www.cowichanmilk.ca/faq.php