Membership
CSA shares are SOLD OUT for 2024. If you’d like to be on a waiting list for 2025, please email us at hillsidespringsfarm@gmail.com.
In 2024, we will offer 20 Full shares, priced at $675, and 40 Half shares, at $425, for sign-ups before April 1st. After April 1st, full shares are $700, and half shares are $45o. A price comparison of local organic produce at a regional natural foods co-op showed the value of a 2012 Full share to be over $1200. CSA members comment, “We were thrilled with the quality and quantity of the food. It was well worth the money.”
CSA members subscribe before the growing season starts. During harvest (early June to late November), members come to the farm (or to a Keene drop-off site) weekly to pick up their share of the garden’s bounty. Full shares feed 2-4 adults, or a small family, and are picked up once a week. Half shares, picked up every other week, are suitable for one or two people.
Vegetables are harvested and washed on distribution days, and are ready for members to weigh or count out at the harvest shed. Some vegetables, especially those that are challenging to grow or very popular, are metered out (for example, one head of lettuce per week).
Members can customize their shares through:
• Free-choice items: For produce we have in abundance, members are invited to take as much as their household would reasonably eat between pick-up days.
• You-pick opportunities: Some crops are very labor-intensive to harvest, so “you-pick” allows members to harvest their own vegetables, and allows the farmers the time to harvest everything else!
• Surplus and sharing tray: Members are invited to put in the tray any part of their metered-out share they can’t use or don’t want, and any member can take whatever is there. The farmers also add the occasional too large zucchini or seconds tomatoes.
To help make CSA membership available to a broader range of people, we have a CSA Share Scholarship Fund. This fund gives members the opportunity to respond to economic disparities, and further strengthens our sense of community. We also offer CSA shares through EBT- SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and the Granite State Market Match.
Beginning in 2019, we have a new CSA share program available for limited income members, thanks to a joint project of Farmers Helping Farmers, our local CSA Farmer group, and the Cheshire County Conservation District. Here's more info from the CCCD's website at https://www.cheshireconservation.org/farmshare
To join Hillside Springs Farm and CSA Garden, please print and fill out our membership form. Send the form, along with a check payable to Hillside Springs Farm, to PO Box 233, Westmoreland NH 03467.
Photo on left thanks to Chris Silvestri, on right to Lindsay Freese