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Community-Supported Agriculture
Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a socio-economic model of agriculture and food distribution. Members of a community pledge their support to a farm so that the farmland holds an intrinsic value to both the growers and its community supporters. This concept helps to provide a direct market for growers while allowing consumers to get fresh, local products on a consistent basis. There are currently many different models for a CSA program which incorporate all different agricultural products.
Teikei
Teikei, literally translated as "food with the farmers face on it" in Japanese, originated in Japan and is commonly referred to as community-supported agriculture in the United States. Although there are discrepancies of who first gave life to Teikei, it is believed to be alternative form of agribusiness developed by a group of Japanese women joining together to buy fresh, raw milk in the 1960's from a local dairy farmer. This concept bloomed and has become part of many different cultures that are attempting to sustain local foods and farmlands.
Green Hill Urban Farm's Community-Supported Agriculture Program
Green Hill Urban Farm grows approximately five acres of commercial vegetables and herbs at the now Certified Organic Two-Sides Farm in Mars Hill, North Carolina located twenty minutes outside of Asheville city limits.
Green Hill Urban Farm's CSA program supplies fresh local produce weekly to our share members. One important factor that needs to be evaluated by anyone interested in joining our CSA program is the risk that our members share in potential crop failure. We cannot garuntee the amount of product you will recieve due to the variable nature of farming. To avoid waste we allow our members to mix and match their own selections from our offering each week. To further reduce waste we ask our members to bring their own bags/boxes/baskets to fill, but provide bags for those who forget from time to time.
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2010 CSA Pricing-
| Size | Cost | Provides for |
|
1/2 Share |
$325 | 1-3 persons |
| Full Shares | $625 | 3-5 persons |
| Returning Members* | $275/$550 | 1/2 or Full |
This is our third year offering services in a CSA format, which we continue to adjust and experiment with in order to provide the most benefits to our shareholders that we can afford. This year's share price includes only vegetables, flowers, and herbs. While we cannot provide free of cost the signing bonuses we have in the past, we do have the ability to provide a few extra products and bonuses to our members:
Theros Olive Oil- $55 Gallon of Gold! Unfortunately we will not be able to included a 375 Mil bottle ($15) of this fabulous local olive oil like we did lat year. Mike Fortune of Green Hill has had the privledge of assisting in the harvesting, production, and bottling of this un-rivaled product for the past four years! The olives are grown, harvested, and pressed in the Kalamata region of Greece, but is bottled and distributed here in Asheville, NC. Due to our intimate involvement with this product, Niko Theros the owner of Theros Olive Oil (www.therosoliveoil.com), has agreed to provide us and our members, gallons of Theros for cheaper through membership in our farm than directly from Theros Olive Oil itself! Our members have the option to buy 1 gallon jugs of this green gold for $55, a $15 savings over buying from their website!
Fruit- Due to the exponentially higher demand, price, cost, and unpredictabiliy, as well as our limited but growing scope of production, we will not be including fruit with this year's shares. Green Hill is ever expanding our fruit production model which is going on it's third year of intensive developement. We will offer to our shareholders as a bonus, first rights to our fruit products which includes variable lots of appples, pears, raspberries, blue berries, figs, autumn olive, and black berries if the weather and all variables involved cooperate. We will offer our members substaintial discounted pricing for our fruit over our established market prices, which will offer a garunteed savings over other comparable local products. An example: we will offer pick your own Raspberries for $3/pint, picked for $4/pint, where we offer $5 pick your own to the public!
Others- We do offer other products from nearby farms and producers. We have the ability to buy products from producers in a wholesale quanity, then pass the savings on to our shareholders. Products such as Haw Creek Honey, local meat and eggs, and others can be purchased through our farm when locally available and enough members of our farm are interested that it justifies such procurements.
Pickup Location
Our CSA pickup begins weekly in early May and runs through mid October. Pick-up is at Green Hill Urban Farm off Patten Avenue and Deaverview Rd in West Asheville every Wendsday from 4 p.m.- 7 p.m.