CSA: Stoneboat Farm

Links to the website for more info and to pay/sign up on line:
stoneboatpdx.com/csa
Why join our CSA?

There's the veggies for one! Every week you get a set of vegetables to bring home - and if they?re in your fridge you?ll eat them! Because of our farmers market style, you choose, veggie booth, you get to take the veggies you know you like or try something new; it?s up to you.

Our veggies taste great too. We take a ton of time sourcing good varieties and even more caring for the plants from seed to harvest. Over the past seven years we?ve carefully amended our soils for a good micronutrient balance and it really shows in the product. Our plants are healthy, the veggies are super fresh, they taste good, and they are good for you.

But that?s not all! By buying your veggies local you are supporting a vibrant local economy - one that still has food on the shelves (well, collapsible tables) in a pandemic, will still cost about the same as gas prices rise, and support folks who take the land they farm and the community they farm for seriously. With our many local vendors and partnerships we can keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in the community and help build a thoughtful economy that will last.

And a bonus, if intangible, reason: you get a real relationship with the folks who grow your food. If you forgot what something is you can e-mail me a picture (you?ll probably get a recipe or cooking suggestion with the answer too!). If you wonder how something was grown or want to grow it yourself just ask at a pick up. We?re always happy to talk about veggies or even show you where they are growing. The relationships we?ve built as a CSA farm sustain us and we want them to be meaningful to you too.

All that for less than you?d spend at the Farmers? Market or New Seasons for the same amount of veggies!

Details on our farm and CSA:

This will be our eighth(!) year of running our CSA - we have a few improvements this year and a lot of things we know work! As they have for the last seven years the bones of our CSA will stay the same - you can choose your veggies, we will have multiple pick up sites and days and we will get you the very best we?ve got. And we?ll have a great variety of local products from fruit to truffles (the mushroom kind!) beer to bread, kombucha to mushrooms, milk to fish that you can add to your CSA.

The core of our CSA is, of course, the vegetables. We strive to provide the very best veggies for you every week. That means they are healthy, we use rock dusts, composts, and other natural fertilizers (never synthetic fertilizers or pesticides) to keep the plants and ultimately the eaters stocked with all the nutrient they need to live healthy lives. We stretch the seasons a bit to get you a longer tomato season and those early carrots but we don?t grow our veggies in heated tunnels or with any light other than the sun. They experience the low temps at night, the wind in the morning and the hot days that help them develop antioxidants and taste like real veggies.

We want you to like eating your veggies so that means you can choose each week what you want to bring home. Besides the fun of getting to choose, you can adapt your CSA to your life. Want to try something new? We?ve always got a unique green or veggie and a suggestion for using it. Going camping? Get plenty of potatoes and onions for the campfire and maybe some tomatoes for those sandwiches. Know you hate eggplants? You never have to take them. We offer whole and half share of the veggies. Whole shares feed a family of four or two veggie lovers, half shares provide veggies for two people or one veggie lover.

You can get a pretty good idea of what we grow and when on our website here.

You can read more of our farm story here.

Logistics and how it works:

Buying a whole or a half share gets you 24 weeks of vegetables from May 17th until October 30th. You are responsible for picking up your veggies at one of our pick up sites. You can easily change your pick up location with our online scheduler. Our 2021 pick up sites will be at the farm (10850 NW Jackson Quarry rd, Hillsboro, OR, 97124) on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, at the Hollywood Farmers? market on Saturdays and the Orenco Station Farmers? Market on Sundays. At all locations you can pick up your veggies though add ons vary by location.

If you are going to miss a week, no problem! We?ll get you extra veggies when you come back or feel free to let a friend pick up for you - we?ll welcome them and show them the ropes.

All add ons (see the next section) are run by the partner farms and producers. They may have different policies for pick ups and missed shares.

You?ll receive an e-mail every week describing what is in the share, ideas for cooking it, and an update on the farm. When you are in the CSA you are a part of the farm and we?ll keep you updated!

What's new this year:

This winter we spent a lot of time thinking up small improvements that should help us smooth out some of the kinks in our production - we're really hoping to streamline a lot of the direct seeding (so more carrots, we hope!) and even out some of the production in extreme years. I found a few varieties that do very well in the heat which should mean a little more predictability in the veggies each week on our end.

For you all that hopefully means even more choice in the CSA. We hope to switch more things to a "mix and match" style where you can take a bag and fill it with what you like from a few different veggies - much like the potatoes and onions were last year. It won't feel that different as you pick up but it means a little more precision in what you get - just one onion to go with those potatoes for instance.

We certainly plan to keep and improve the u-pick section, especially the flowers. We hope to get a few more fun things this year - more kinds of flowers, hopefully replant the strawberries (though it's hard to find good plants this year) and generally improve on that section of the farm.

Dates and pick ups:
The mainseason CSA runs 24 weeks, from May 17th to October 30th with pick ups Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons/evenings at the farm, at the Hollywood market (Portland) on Saturday, and the Orenco Station Market (Hillsboro) on Sunday.

Cost and how to pay:

The price for a full share of veggies (about enough for a family of four who eat a lot of veggies) will be $790, a half share will be $475.

Fruit shares, which are administered and paid for through Stoneboat but the fruit is grown and the share is run by Kiyokawa Family Orchards, will start July 19th and run 15 weeks - the cost is $200. They are available at any pick up location.

Prices for the CSA did go up this year; like everyone else, the cost of everything we have to buy from fertilizer, to plastic bags has gone up a lot in the last year. We did our best to order early, share shipping with other farms and make other cuts but we are still looking at a cost increase of about 5% on most things so our prices have to go up a bit as well.

It's cheapest to pay with a check or cash - we don't have to pay processing fees on those. Send a check to 10850 NW Jackson Quarry rd, Hillsboro, OR, 97124 of just hand it to me next time your at the market or on the farm. There is also a very convenient way to pay on the website through paypal (you don't need an account, you can use a credit card) but that does cost an additional 5% to cover the cost of the fees.

We also accept SNAP benefits (including PEBT cards that you may have got if your child is in certain public schools). Our partners at the PNW CSA coalition run those cards and also provide matching funds of up to $250 (so a half share is only $247.50 for the whole season, a full share is $540 for the whole season). There is no fee to pay with SNAP.

Most importantly, we don't turn anyone away for their ability to pay for a CSA. We are very lucky and have a great CSA community who donate to help us make sure everyone can afford a CSA. If you need help affording the veggies, we are happy to get you a scholarship (just let us know what you can pay and we'll handle the rest).