Reviews for: Bull Run Mountain Farm
One week I cracked open 4 eggs for breakfast that were not only fertilized but had actual baby chicks with feathers inside. Leigh's explanation, "They must have been old. " NO KIDDING!!!! Who harvested and distributed those eggs??? I am reluctant to open the remainder of that carton.
I purchased an add-on fruit share and, so far, the only fruit has been tiny pears that dropped off the stressed tree(s) and rotted on my counter before they would ripen, just as I expected. I have pear trees myself. I understand when to harvest them ( they are always unripe when harvested) and how to ripen them. This week, there were gorgeous peaches in the egg fridge. Leigh did not include any in our share just one tiny watermelon he admitted was underripe. Tried to eat it, but it was only fit for compost.
Leigh is pleasant. That is the strongest point I can say about the CSA. We have belonged to another CSA for a few years but chose to switch when Sunnyside eliminated their Saturday pickup. Leigh accommodated us with a Saturday, on the farm, pickup. Luckily for us, Sunnyside is willing to offer us a partial share for the remainder of this season so we will switch to Tuesday pickups and will kiss goodbye the over $1000 paid to Bull Run for a bushel share plus eggs plus fruit in favor of getting beautiful, delicious, organic, and highly varied produce elsewhere in copious quantities. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!
This is the entire email of the upcoming week's share, the Aug. 18, a sample of the litany of promises Leigh makes. 3 weeks into August and he is trying to say he still has few tomatoes to share? Every other farmer and garden for miles around is drowning in tomatoes.
August 18 Week ten vegetables Friday's vegetables (I think this is what I'll be picking) green bell peppers - plenty of large bells. The only thing that holds back from giving you a dozen a week isthat if I leave some large ones the vine they will turn into red, orange and yellow peppers in a few weeks. purple bell pepper sweet corn (maybe this week, definitely next week) Italian basil (all you can eat and then some) Thai basil tomatoes (cooking, slicing and maybe some cherry tomatoes. They are finally starting to ripen.) eggplant -- they are real slow in starting - once they do it will be all you can eat from then on out. The hot peppers are starting... soon it should be all you can eat herbs - for Monday I picked sage, rosemary and spearmint. Is there anything you want? Next week, after Monday deliveries, I'm flying out to visit a brother and sister in Colorado. And I won't come back until Sunday. One of my neighbors, Brian, will do next Friday's picking and delivering. Leigh
The vegetables are delicious, quality and quantity are both held to standard here. In the few years ive been a shareholder, ive yet to have a bad experience. Always ripe and always fresh is a motto this farm seems to grow on.
Always a plus when the farm and people are great too! Great experience being able to go out on the farm and see where your food is coming from.
This gets my reccomendation as well as 5 stars from me and i implore you to give it a chance as well
i had a two person vegetable share and i was happy with the variety and quantity of vegetables given.
loved being able to visit the farm and leigh was always friendly and welcoming to shareholders. seems to be willing to work with shareholders for suggestions about what vegetables to grow, pick up locations, etc.
in response to complaints made in previous reviews: i prefer to select my own vegetables so other csa organizations that provide pre-bagged vegetables, wouldn't work for me. as far as complaints regarding squished tomatoes, leigh made the change this year to personally hand out the tomatoes to shareholders rather than us selecting our own; so i never received squished tomatoes. also, unwashed vegetables aren't surprising to me nor are they an issue. they come from a farm and they look like they come from a farm. i prefer to wash my produce just before eating it anyways, stays fresher that way.
would highly recommend this csa to others!
"We don'?t spend a lot of time 'presenting' our vegetables. The vegetables you get in your share are fresh. We don't spent time making them appear so. Our shareholders are expected to wash their vegetables."
I've been quite happy with the selection, quantity and quality. I've had the egg share and fruit share for each year and there is variety in quality of the food, depending on what's happening. That's the nature of a non-greenhouse grow-operation. They also do a beef sale with a local rancher in the winter and this will be the 3rd year I participate in that.
My kids love to visit the farm, see the chickens, take a hike or just experience life in the country. Leigh is a very engaging story teller and shareholders are always welcome at the farm.
I think that sometimes people who join CSAs don't really understand the concept of local, in-season produce and they don't get with the spirit of the program. I also really like the egg and fruit shares.
Anyone who wants to enjoy in season vegetables, has reasonable expectations and also wants "belong" to a farm, will love this CSA! The farm is well cared for and beautiful.
I don't want my CSA share to be packaged into disposable bags just to make things convenient. I like that we line up with our large totes and supply any smaller bags that we might like. I use cotton bags for greens and just throw the rest all in the big tote. I like getting to look through what is available and pick out my own items. Other people might prefer a box with each item picked out and placed in there for them, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is just a matter of knowing what you want and making sure that is what will be provided.
One exception is that I liked that this year Leigh went to picking out the tomatoes for us. I think that helped to cut down on the squished ones, and I think that I got more tomatoes than ever in 2009. I think the tomatoes that I get in my CSA are far superior to the ones that I get in the store, so I don't mind that I have to be careful with them.
I got the fruit share one year (2008) and was overwhelmed with the number of apples and peaches, so I didn't get it again. I have only a small under-the-counter fridge, so I couldn't just make a bunch of applesauce, peach sauce, or peach salsa to eat later. If I had a larger fridge, I would love being able to make the summer's fruit into something delicious to eat all winter. There definitely wasn't a lack of fruit that year!
Not every CSA is right for every person, but I think it is important to research first so that your expectations are calibrated to what the farmer plans to provide, both vegetable and experience-wise.
As others have posted, the vegetables were never washed, and the variety was less than what I expected. The quality of vegetables, particularly tomatoes, weren't very impressive. They were small, often not ripe, and frequently bruised. Every week, I threw away half of the peaches I was given because they were bruised beyond usability.
I understand 2009 wasn't the best year in terms of weather. I did see, however, that vegetables at local farmers markets, were of far superior size and quantity to what was provided by the CSA throughout the entire year.
Yes, Leigh is a nice guy, and his newsletter was enjoyable reading. At the end of the day, however, I'm paying him for the quantity, quality and variety of produce. I was less than impressed.
According to all accounts, the weather this year has been pretty crazy. In past years, the bounty has been greater but part of the CSA deal is risk sharing. That said, we still manage to get delicious veggies and herbs every week. I can't comment on why other CSA farms are harvesting vegetables at much different times, but so far the CSA vegetables have differed very little from what is listed on the farm's website for past years. People should check this out before committing.
The farmers also offer a lot of opportunities to visit and be involved in the farm. It is a wonderful experience and I highly recommend it. Leigh is extremely knowledgeable and passionate about farming, and very easy to talk with.
All around, the CSA has been a great experience, and I'm sorry that others have been disappointed.
Leigh Hauter runs one of the biggest CSAs in the DC area. Apparently, he manages this feat by never bothering to weed, fertilize, or wash his vegetables. There are other CSAs in the area wash and bag their vegetables. I have a friend who is a member of another CSA and her baby onions are washed and bunched, and ten times the size of what I got from Leigh.
My friend has already gotten corn, beans, peas, summer squashes, full sized heads of lettuce, and full size beets from her shares. From my 3 shares so far, I've gotten a few garlic scapes, a couple unwanted herb plants, pitiful baby onions that look like scallons, a handful of basil, some pakchoi, and what amounts to maybe 2 pounds of weedy and wilty greens.
If the produce does not improve soon, I will stop picking up shares and shop at the Alexandria farmer's market instead.
Comment
I'm sorry that Ms. Rhodes was unhappy. The real problem with her and her husband is that I broke most of our logistics rules attempting to make her and her husband happy. The Rhodes signed up to pick up at our farm drop off (preboxed and left at the end of our mile driveway on Friday afternoons so people did not have to drive all the way in to the farm. However they did not want to pick up his vegetables on Friday and he wanted to drive in to the farm. That was fine with me however the difficulty arose when we couldn't schedule one time and day for him to get his vegetables so I could have them picked and ready. Which meant that when he showed up without giving me notice I would have to put down what I was doing and walk through the fields with him picking a share as we went. Even that was fine. I enjoyed visiting with him however he didn't always show up when I was at the farm and instead go around the farm looking for vegetables he could put into his share. This meant that sometimes he would go out into the fields picking vegetables and other times he would go through boxes of old vegetables and eggs looking for produce to put into his share. I tried to explain to him the problem of coming out to the farm without setting up a schedule before hand but we had difficulties communicating. They didn't answer my emails and instead would send notes to me through facebook which at the time I didn't know how to use as a means of personal communications (my fault, obviously). In short the Rhodes and I had a major communication problem. I would pick shares for them to pick up that would go to waste when they didn't show to pick up their vegetables and other times they would show up when no one was at home on the farm and no picked to put in their share. I could go on and on about the many snaffus attempting to get them their weekly share. Finally, about the time Ms. Rhodes wrote her review they stopped coming out to the farm and I emailed them that their share would no longer be at the farm but would be out at the end of our driveway with the other two dozen shares. Fruit share. We offer a fruit share from fruit we buy from orchards out in Rappahannock County. We make it very clear on our webpage and in person that the fruit does not come from us. Our fruit share begins with peaches when the local crop begins to ripen around mid July.. It usually consists of 12 peaches per week beginning the second week of July. On about the third week of August when the local peach harvest ended the share switches to local apples.. We had a few Asian pears in the fruit share in early September but largely when the peach crop ended the fruit share switched to apples. usually twelve apples of different varieties per week. Again the fruit share begins around mid July and goes to the end of the season and usually consists of 12 pieces of fruit, usually peaches and apples. The pears that Ms. Rhodes refers to were not part of the fruit share. On our farm is an old heirloom pear tree with a small but sweet fruit. When they ripened around the end of June we picked the pears and offered them to the people getting vegetable share. These small pears were tasty and especially good for making jams. The only thing I can say about the bad eggs is that I'm sorry. I wouldn't have willingly given them bad eggs and when I was told about it I have them two dozen fresh eggs to make up for it. I don't know where the bad eggs came from though I suspect they came from one of Mr. Rhodes unsupervised search for vegetables. Our 2017 season was a better than average growing season. Unfortunately the problem I encountered with the Rhodes were largely do to our failure to adequately communicate and because I tried to adapt my delivery system for their special needs which, again, because of our poor communication, did not work.