A share from Sound Pine Farm supports your family, the environment, and our local community. At Sound Pine, we don’t just farm– we strive to steward the land that supports us. For us, this means improving soil health, increasing habitat for beneficial organisms, keeping synthetic chemicals out of our fields, and maintaining functioning ecosystem services, all while growing abundant and nutritious fruits and vegetables.
What makes our CSA different? A share from Sound Pine Farm is tailored to provide your household with the most choice and flexibility possible with a CSA. Our farm is CSA-centric, which means our members always get the best of what’s coming out of our fields. Our model gives members the experience of shopping at a grocery store or farmers’ market, while receiving more value, and directly supporting a diversified small, local farm. This system satisfies members and reduces waste, thereby helping your farmers. Learn more about our CSA in the tabs below!
CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, is essentially a partnership between us (the farmers) and you! This partnership provides you with all the delicious and nutritious food we can grow for you between June and October, at a much lower price than retail markets. In return, you promise us your commitment to our vegetables by paying for part or all of your share before the season starts. This allows us to have capital at a time when it can otherwise be challenging for farmers to buy seeds and potting soil, and essentially “contracts” us to grow for you!
Our CSA specifically aims to give you what you want, and a lot of it! Our goal is to limit you as little as possible with regards to choice and quantity. Our Free-Choice model means that you can take whatever amount of produce you feel your household needs in a given week. Our CSA is meant for households that love vegetables, and we encourage our members to take large quantities of vegetables each week! At times, we limit certain crops in order to make sure they are available for everyone in a given week, but overall, you choose how much produce and in what combination you want. We also ask that you take a large variety of veggies, rather than a lot of just a few things, in order to allow us to offer a large variety to all of our members. We grow based on the model that everyone will take almost everything!
This model relies on trust! While you are welcome to take extra for a meal you’re hosting, we hope that you generally take just what your family needs for the week. We can’t allow members to take vegetables for friends or neighbors, or for two households to “split” a share. Your honesty is what allows us to offer a free-choice share with enough bounty and diversity for all of our members, at a very reasonable price.
Here at Sound Pine Farm, we deeply value the commitment you are taking when you become a member of our CSA. In return, we want to give you as much flexibility, convenience, and produce as we can! Instead of boxed shares or strict limits, we have a market-style stand where you can choose exactly which veggies you want for the week. Hate lettuce? Don’t take any! Love lettuce? Take three heads! It’s essentially like going to a farmers’ market stand and choosing whatever you want. We do limit some some crops, in order to make sure they are available for everyone in a given week. However, we want you to take a lot of produce, and our Free-Choice system is designed so that you should not need to supplement your CSA share with any vegetables from the store. Our members will tell you that their bags are stuffed to overflowing with veggies each week!
This model relies on trust! While you are welcome to take extra for a meal you’re hosting, we hope that you generally take just what your family needs for the week. We can’t allow members to take vegetables for friends or neighbors, or for two households to “split” a share. Your honesty is what allows us to offer a free-choice share with enough bounty and diversity for all of our members, at a very reasonable price.
We strive to make our CSA affordable, while providing your household with an abundance of produce, and allowing us to make a living wage. We feel that when you buy a Sound Pine Farm CSA share, you should not have to buy any vegetables to supplement your share. Our pricing model reflects our free-choice system- the larger your household, the more produce we want you to take!
Our pricing works as follows. We define a “household” as a group of people living together at the same address, such as a family or group of roommates who regularly eat meals together. The 1-adult share is intended for single-adult households only. Because our free-choice model allows members to take all the produce they need for their household, we are not able to split any size share between two separate households. This enables us to provide a bounty of produce to our members, while allowing us to make a living. Keep in mind that an “adult” is any household member over the age of 18. Children under 18 are included free!
Prices are as follows (broken down over a 20-week season):
1 adult household – $560 = $28/week
2 adult household – $675 = $34/week ($17/adult)
3 adult household – $765 = $39.50/week ($13/adult)
4 adult household – $880 = $45.25/week ($11/adult)
Payments can be made either: in full upon signing up for a share, or in three installments, with the first third due at signing up, the second due June 1st, and the third due September 1st.
We love sharing vegetables and want to make sure they are financially accessible! If your household finds the cost of the share prohibitive to joining our CSA, please email us at soundpinefarm@gmail.com with information about your household size and the amount that you feel you are able to pay for your share. Thanks to folks who have helped support others’ shares, we will make sure the remainder is covered! To those who feel able, please consider supporting families who can’t cover the full cost of the share by contributing to our Share Support Fund here.
Our CSA runs from mid-June through October. As the season approaches, we will announce our exact start date in our newsletter.
Our pick-ups will be on Mondays from 3:30-6pm and Thursdays from 4-6:30pm at our farm (53 Pennellville Road).
Monday pick-ups are a 5-minute walk down our farm driveway to our CSA pavilion. Thursday pick-ups are at a tent just inside our farm gate on Pennellville Road. We ask that all members park on Pennellville Rd. and walk to the pick-up site.
Members will be asked to select either a Monday or Thursday pick-up day, closer to the start of the season.
Choosing a CSA share is all about embracing a variety of seasonal produce and trying new things! The vegetables available in the share will vary each week, due to seasonality and changing growing conditions, but the chart below shows what you can expect to see over the course of the season and approximately when each crop is available.
In addition, each CSA membership includes access to Cook With What You Have, a site full of recipes, tips, and inspiration for CSA members, as well as access to our weekly newsletter, and our Facebook Member Community Group to share your recipes with other members!
tomatoes • peppers • carrots • lettuce • green beans • zucchini • eggplant • winter squash • herbs • hot peppers • arugula • radishes • scallions • cabbage • onions • melons • snow peas • radicchio • leeks • basil • chard • fennel • napa • greens • beets • cucumbers • spinach • cilantro • broccoli • bok choi • kale • cherry tomatoes • dill