CSA BASICS
5 Great Reasons to Join the Red Fire Farm CSA:
- Enjoy fresh locally grown vegetables. Our careful variety selection and organic growing practices bring out the very best in flavor!
- Help us compete with environmentally detrimental industrial food producers from distant regions.
- By supporting Red Fire Farm, you also benefit
the local economy.
Red Fire Farm both provides jobs and also recycles money by purchasing supplies from other local businesses. - We don’t use chemicals, synthetic pesticides or herbicides on our vegetable fields.
- You become involved in a community of farmers and eaters committed to healthy food and a cleaner environment!
How Red Fire Farm Works:
We specialize in Diversity. Each season we grow over 300 different varieties of vegetables, berries, plants and flowers.
For the CSA, we grow abundant quantities of such favorites as heirloom tomatoes, lettuce, and carrots as well as a selection of less usual vegetables like edamame and Brussels sprouts to keep things interesting.
At Red Fire
Farm we offer several share options to match the needs of your household.
Each share includes a selection of freshly harvested produce to be
picked up once a week.
Additional produce of certain crops (peas, beans,
basil, cherry tomatoes, herbs, strawberries and cut flowers) are also
available to all CSA members for pick-your-own at no additional cost.
At most pick up locations, produce is displayed so that you can select
the items that you want within the weekly guidelines. Pre-packed boxes are offered during November and December at all distribution locations when the weather is cold.
Additional Member Benefits:
- Biweekly newsletter full of recipes, farm news and sustainable agriculture information.
- Opportunities to purchase bulk produce at discount prices for canning and freezing.
- The opportunity to work with the farmers (plant, weed, harvest, mulch) or assist with outreach to new members.
- Invitations to farm events such as the annual Tomato Festival, member potlucks, cooking demos, and more!
- Daily recreational access to the farm for walking, picnicking, playground equipment, bird watching, and more!
CSA SHARE OPTIONS
Vegetable Share Options
The standard Full Season Red Fire Farm CSA share option is 24 weeks long and is available at most locations. This season begins the week of June 9th and ends the week of Dec. 15th (24 distributions). The distributions are weekly except during Nov. and Dec. when they are every other week. Sliding Scale $525-$650 . Please pay at least $575 unless you are low income. Payments over $575 will be used to subsidize shares for low income members.
For those who want only an Abbreviated Main Season
share,
we offer a 20 week option which ends the week of October 22nd. Sliding Scale $425-$550. Please pay at least $475 unless you are low income. Payments over $475 will be used to subsidize shares for low income members.
NOTE: for Springfield and Mass Mutual, only Main Season shares are available.
To see when things are in season, check our season chart.
Flower Shares
Take home gorgeous bouquets each week to brighten your table.
Long-time Red Fire Farm employees John White and Chanya See-aw are starting
their own cut flower business called the Moon Flower
Farm Project. John
and Chanya are renting space in the Red Fire Fields and will be growing
a beautiful selection of cut flowers.
A Cut Flower Share includes
a weekly bouquet of local flowers picked by John and Chanya and delivered
along with your produce share. Flower share distributions last for
10 weeks, starting in early July and ending in Mid September.
Flowers to be grown include snapdragons, sweet peas, many types of sunflowers, asters, gladiolas, dahlias, statice, lisianthus, ornamental grasses, celosia and many others. Flowers will be fresh cuts, except in the late season dried flower bouquets may be included. Flower shares are available at all Red Fire Farm distribution locations except Montague. Flower shares cost $100 for the season.
Boston Home and Office Delivery
Have Red Fire Farm Shares delivered to your home or office door!
This season we are pioneering a new collaboration with the Cambridge-based New Amsterdam Project (NAP), which will allow Red Fire Farm shares to be delivered directly to your home or office. If you live or work in the municipalities of Cambridge, Jamaica Plain, Somerville, or Brighton (Zip Codes: 02138, 02139, 02140, 02141, 02143, 02144, 02130, 02134, 02135) you can sign up for this option.
Employees of NAP will deliver your produce shares from our distribution location to your home or office on their human-powered TriCycle Trucks! This collaboration will make receiving your weekly shares easy and convenient. For many of our subscribers that convenience will be a welcomed innovation. Plus, our shares will arrive at your door in an environmentally sound way that does not add extra greenhouse gases to our atmosphere.
To sign up for home deliveries, just make sure you live in one of the designated delivery zip codes. The cost for delivery is $260 for the full 24-week season; or $220 for the 20-week season. This price includes two heavy-duty cardboard produce boxes in which we will pack your shares. Each week, you will leave your empty box out so NAP TriCycle Truck drivers can exchange it for a full one.
Please call the farm (413) 467-7645 or email us if you would like more information about our new human-powered home/office delivery option.
Fruit-Plus Shares
The Fruit-Plus Share is a deluxe option including locally grown fruit and slow- to-harvest vegetables (beans, peas, and cherry tomatoes). We have a limited number of fruit shares available, so sign up early to reserve one. You must also have a regular produce share in order to purchase a fruit share.
This share provides one fruit unit (or occasionally other value-added produce such as peas, beans and cherry tomatoes) per week. Example units are: one quart of strawberries, 1.5-quart box of peaches, or a 1/2-peck of apples. The season lasts for twenty weeks and begins in June with Strawberries. As the season goes on, it includes Peas, Blueberries, Plums, Green Beans, Peaches, Raspberries, Pears and a wide variety of Apples in the fall.
Some of the berries and vegetables included in this share are grown by Red Fire Farm and are certified organic. Most of the fruit, however, will be grown and harvested from other Pioneer Valley fruit farms. These farms use low spray Integrated Pest Management on their crops, but the fruit is not organic.
Farms supplying fruit include River Valley Farm (blueberries), Cold Spring Orchard (peaches, apples), and Rice Fruit Farm (plums, pears and apples).
The Fruit-Plus Share Option costs $180 per share for the season.
Note:
Fruit-Plus Shares will be available
only at the Cambridge, Somerville, Jamaica Plain, Brighton and Mass Mutual locations.