Reviews for: Erehwon Farm
In Year 2, their newsletter was full of their great experiences at the farmer's market and how well they were doing there--a surprise, considering that our subscriber boxes continued to have disappointing volume and rather sad looking vegetables.
After a while, it became obvious that farmers were selling their best produce at the market and giving the leftovers to the prepaid subscribers. That's their choice, certainly, but it was not acceptable to our family, and so we took our business to another grower.
Comment
We checked our records and do not show a subscriber named Rosen, so we could not tell when he was a subscriber. It is possible that the subscription is under another name, as a number of our subscribers share and we don't always know all of the names. I would still like to address his comments. First of all, I checked all of our newsletters from 2008 for references to the Farmer's Markets. There were five last year--out of the 20 weeks of the season. One was a story Farmer Tim told about selling the 4 dozen ears of corn he brought to a market. (This was after our 150 plus subscribers had received a half dozen ears apiece.) Two were in September after the torrential rains stating that we had discontinued most of our markets because we no longer had enough produce to sell and relating about some other farmers in the areas that had also stopped going to markets because of lack of produce. The other two mentions were in response to subscribers letters and in those two mentions we specifically stated that less than 5-7% of our produce goes to the market and that all of the produce is left over from the CSA pick-up. (We also do cut flowers, plants, and fresh herbs that are prepared just for the market.) I find no reference at all to how well things are going at the market. We absolutely do NOT save the best stuff for the markets. We harvest on Tuesday for delivery and Wednesday and Friday for subscriber pick up. Our main markets are on Thursday and Saturday and what we take are things that were out on the subscriber table and not taken. (We do harvest extra to make sure there will be leftovers for the market.) There are many items I never get to take to the market because it all goes to subscribers. Other items there may be only one or two bunches. Except for greens and a few other items which we keep in coolers, the veggies we take to market have been sitting on the subscriber pick-up table for several hours the previous afternoon. Thus they can be no less wilted than the veggies that customers pick up at the farm. I am sorry Mr. Rosen was not satisfied with his share, and there may be many reasons for that (none of which were we able to address because he never communicated with us directly), but his assumptions about our cherry-picking produce for the markets are groundless. Our subscribers absolutely come first.
Comment
As this is my first review, I didn't realize, nor intend, to be anonymous, so thought I'd leave my name here; Lesli Kamm. Thank you again, Erehwon, for a great introduction to being involved in a CSA program.