Onward: An Update on Covid-19 and our CSA Program
It has been a surreal month for us all. While the trees wake up from their winter slumber, and green starts to pop all around us, we are faced with anxieties we never expected even a month ago. How do we keep ourselves and our customers safe and healthy? Will we have the help we need to harvest this year’s crop? And how will we ensure it gets safely to our customers? Amid these concerns, and the process of continual adaptation required in this time, nature waits for no one. We’ve found the work of the farm, the resiliency of the orchard and the trees’ persistence all help to keep us optimistic. There is comfort in some certainties: we are here, we are healthy, and we’ll do our darndest to farm this land and grow a great crop of produce for you this year. So far we have been very lucky.
Maybe more now than ever, the CSA model of produce distribution makes so much sense. For members, it means a guaranteed supply of fresh, healthy produce for six months of the year, picked straight from a local field by a farmer you can trust; produce that will change hands less than any other you can buy. For farms, CSA provides the resources needed to make sure we can meet our goals this difficult season, from buying seeds and fertilizer to hiring the staff to plant, tend and harvest the crops. We urge you to consider joining our CSA this season. Pickup is here on the farm and in Park Slope, Brooklyn. To make the opportunity available for more members, we’ve extended our early bird discount by one week.
Read on to learn more about our CSA program and some important changes we are making to distribution to ensure it’s safe as can be for members.
Safety First
We’re making the following changes to our program to ensure members’ safety:
Boxed Shares
As long as COVID19 is still a threat, we will be boxing our CSA shares this year and making CSA distribution with as much speed and as little contact as possible. We are still researching packaging options to make sure this solution is also sustainable.
Social Distancing
We will only allow a certain number of members in the CSA pickup area to pick up their box at a time. This will mean that safe social distancing is ensured. This number will be determined once the location/floor plan is finalized.
Sanitization
All staff handling produce have been trained to follow strict guidelines per the CDC’s recommendations for handwashing, wearing gloves etc. We’ll also provide either sanitizers or convenient hand-washing for members before and after they pick up their boxes.
Pick-Your-Own
Pick your-own generally opens in early June. As of now, we are planning on keeping pick-your-own as part of the share (as well as open to the public ) but planning out ways to ensure social distancing and proper sanitization for customers. This remains a work in progress and we will release more details as we firm up this plan.
About the CSA Program:
We are hard at work planning, prepping and seeding for the coming season.
As a Fishkill Farms CSA member, you’ll enjoy a weekly box of produce for 25 weeks. Each week will feature a selection of fresh, organic vegetables and berries as well as an assortment of eco-certified fruits, such as white and yellow peaches, pears, plums, and apples. To give members as full a selection as possible, we may supplement our own organic vegetables with produce carefully sourced from organic partner farms who share our growing practices and philosophy.
Signing up is easy and can be done online through our website or by sending us an application through the mail. Learn more on the CSA page of our website or sign up through the links below.
