Cherry Ridge Organic Farm

can also visit our website (link below) for more information and sign-up forms.

Thanks for your interest in our CSA. We cover some FAQs and details about our program here. For a full brochure with more details, sign-up forms or questions, please email us.

New in 2008!!! Egg Shares and Cheese Shares!

Eggs: Egg shares will be offered by Briar Patch Farm in Rockbridge County. They pasture their chickens on pesticide-free fields, and feed them a natural, medication free feed, with healthy ingredients. Eggs will be available by the dozen or 18 count. If you buy an egg share, we will make sure that your eggs are delivered to you each week along with your produce.

Farmstead Cheeses: Cheese shares will be offered by Mountain View Farm in Rockbridge County. All of their farmstead cheeses are made using raw milk from their dairy herd, cultures, rennet, and sea salt as well as various herbs, spices, and peppers. If you buy a cheese share, you should expect to get 10-12 different varieties of cheese over the course of the season. We will make sure your cheese is delivered to you along with your produce each week.

Working Shares:

We offer and encourage you to consider purchasing a working share. A majority of working members are essential to the program’s operation, and we make only a limited number of shares available as non-working. Our members who have purchased working shares in the past find it quite rewarding to help with the harvest, and enjoy learning more about how the farm works and how their food is produced. Working on the farm really is quite fun and you will meet lots of interesting people.

Work requirements are not onerous: Half-share members pitch in eight hours during the course of a season (usually two mornings) and full-share members pitch in 16 hours. Most of the time working members find it convenient to coordinate their work days along with their transporting days (described below).

Transporting Food:

Because of our rural location, all members are required to share in the responsibility of transporting produce from the farm to their local communities.

Our Staunton members will receive produce on Tuesdays only. Each Tuesday during the season, a member from the Staunton area comes to the farm, picks up the produce for all the Staunton customers, and delivers it to a convenient drop-off point in Staunton. The remaining customers in that area then come to the drop-off point to pick up their produce. It will be your turn to pick up the produce at the farm 2-3 times per season.

Lexington customers will receive produce on Saturdays only. The same arrangement described above will apply. Each week one Lexington member will come to the farm, pick up all the produce for Lexington members and deliver it to a drop-off point in town.

Customers who live close to the farm may pick up their produce directly at the farm on Tuesdays. Customers picking up at the farm are not required to help transport food to Lexington or Staunton.

Thanks again for your interest CSA. Please contact us if you have questions, or if you would like a full brochure with sign-up forms. Our brochure includes even more detail than is provided here, and gives lists of crops we grow, a sample of what a week's share of produce looks like, and more.

Some FAQs

How Our Business Works

The most common question we get asked is what is a CSA and how does it work. CSAs in their purest form involve customers financing a farming operation for a season, assuming the risks and rewards of the farm’s operation, and receiving a share in the harvest. There are many variations on this model.

At Cherry Ridge Farm, we select a variety of crops that we are going to grow each season, and estimate how many families we can feed with these crops. We create a budget to cover the farm’s operational costs of growing the crops and paying the farmer a salary. We then sell CSA shares that will cover these operational costs. When a customer or “member” buys a share, each week they receive a bag of food from us. In 2008, our third year of operating the CSA, we plan to feed 36 customers. Our season will be 29 weeks long, starting in May and ending in early December.

At Cherry Ridge Farm our members share in the responsibility of harvesting and distributing the produce. Most members purchase working shares. In exchange for a discounted price, each member helps on one or two harvest days during the season. Our customers find that it really is quite fun to work on the farm and is an opportunity to meet interesting people.

Members also are required to help with distributing food. Because we service Lexington and Staunton, each week a member from each area comes to the farm, picks up the produce for all the members in that area, and delivers it to a convenient drop off point in that area. The other members in that area then come to the drop off point to pick up their produce. This arrangement is more convenient for the members than having to travel to the farm each week, and saves a great deal of cost that the farm would otherwise assume in transporting the food.

What’s In a Share?

Sometimes people ask about the type and quantity of produce that a member receives if they purchase a share. Part of the agreement is that as farmers we are able to distribute the harvest of those crops that we have available. The members do not choose their weekly vegetables. We do our best to always provide a variety, and not inundate members with too much of one vegetable. At any given time we have 5-6 crops in season. We also make sure that the contents of each members’ bag are uniform, and that during the course of the season they receive vegetables for at least the value of their share price. Usually they receive more.

CSAs are a niche program. Not everyone is willing to be flexible about what vegetables they will be cooking with. Many people are not willing to make such a long commitment. For those who are suited to the CSA experience, however, the rewards are great. The quality of the produce is remarkable, both because it is grown in an optimally healthy manner, and because it is quite fresh—usually picked the same day it is delivered. Members find that they fall in love with certain foods as a result of their CSA experience. They also find that they are stretched to learn to prepare ingredients that they would not have chosen, and often find that they like these newfound foods.

Most CSA members also gain great satisfaction from knowing the source of their food, getting to know “their” local farm, and learning more about agriculture. This intangible aspect is an incredibly important part of the CSA program, and we especially seek members who are interested in this type of experience.

How We Farm

Our farming methods could be described as small, diverse and sustainable.

We have enriched our bottomland soil with organic matter over the years, and as a result our land is quite productive per square foot compared with conventional farming operations. We grow a huge diversity of crops, each on a small scale. Because we provide produce to our customers during a 29 week season, we must offer variety. We also must grow our crops in “successions”, i.e. timed plantings of the same crop that ensure the crop is in season for a longer period of time than a single planting would be.

Our season starts out with cool-weather crops like asparagus, lettuce, various greens, radishes and peas. Later in the season we have warmer weather crops such as tomatoes, corn, snap beans, eggplant, squashes, etc. In the fall we transition again to cool weather greens, root crops such as carrots, beets, turnips, and “keeper” crops such as potatoes and sweet potatoes.

Our farming methods are sustainable. We are not USDA certified organic, due in part to administrative costs related to certification. We also believe our growing methods are more discriminating than USDA requirements. We do not use synthetic fertilizers or agricultural chemicals that we consider to be harmful to the farm’s ecosystem. We use organic fertilizers to enhance the soil’s health, and find that healthy soil goes a long way towards growing healthy plants. Like many sustainable farmers we find that we are not overrun with rampant insect problems, because our crop diversity attracts a full ecosystem of predators and prey that shield us from the worst of insect plagues. We also use a variety of sustainable methods to protect our crop from the insect damage that we do encounter.

We hope this information provides you with a basic understanding of what we do and how we do it. We look forward to farming for you and working with you, and we welcome your questions and thoughts along the way.

(This listing was last updated on Jun 11, 2008)

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