What is a CSA?
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a relationship between our farm and you as our customer. Rather than simply purchasing food, our customers become “members” of this CSA farm who receive a portion of the farm’s harvest. Sometimes called “farmshares” or “subscriptions”, the harvest is spread out through the year so everyone gets to try a little bit of everything.
In addition to the hair sheep who take up the majority of the space and pasture rotations on our farm, we also raise a limited number of cattle and pigs each year, as well as enough chickens, turkeys, and duck to provide for the number of CSA members with a bit left over for winter and farmer’s market sales.
Our Monthly CSA
We run our CSA with monthly meat “share” boxes in a full and half share size, along with add-on options to boost your monthly total pounds and customize your monthly box.
Full share members receive 20 to 24 pounds of meat monthly, including approximately half poultry and half red meat, and two dozen eggs (subject to availability; local members may split egg pick up dates).
Half share members receive 12 to 14 pounds of meat monthly, including approximately half poultry and half red meat, and one dozen eggs (subject to availability as above).
If available, we like to offer extras from our vegetable garden, although last year with all the spring and summer rains the garden flooded out twice! In 2019 we have improved drainage and hope for a good veggie harvest!
CSA Meats
We have a plethora of meats available for the CSA, including beef, pork, lamb, chicken and turkey. Towards the middle of the CSA season, we will also have duck available. Some months certain types of meat or cuts of meat may be limited, in which case not every single box will be identical.
Red meat includes beef, pork, and lamb, with everyday cuts (certain roasts and steaks, ground meats, sausages, burgers, brats, stew/kabob meat, soup bones, and other miscellaneous cuts) and limited cuts (certain roasts and steaks, ribs, smoked meats, chops, shanks, and other miscellaneous cuts).
Poultry includes whole chickens, ducks, and turkeys, parted or halved chicken, and packs of chicken or turkey breasts, thighs, wings, drumsticks, duck breasts, ground turkey, and possible ground chicken and duck/chicken sausage.
We are open to processing requests such as summer sausage, jerky, etc – let us know if you’d like to see something in the boxes! We cannot promise to meet every special processing request due to logistical challenges of putting these in every box, but we hope to provide many options throughout the season.
Add-Ons
Thanks to popular demand, we have remodeled our plans for the box contents, and included options to customize your box beyond the basic half and full shares. Add-ons are modeled to save you money off our retail prices and allow you to spread out over the season (added into your monthly boxes) or pick up all at once provided the inventory is available.
Food Safety
We store all meat frozen in a licensed, inspected food warehouse room on our farm. This means that we have all meat for sale stored separately from our own and that it is inspected by the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) on an annual basis and the license is renewed annually. We monitor the temperature in each freezer to ensure all remains frozen. In the event of freezer thaw, all meat from that freezer is repurposed towards raw dog feeding and discounted, or discarded depending on the nature of the thaw.
Meat PRocessing
Our meat is processed under USDA inspection from start to finish, from butcher to flash freezing and packaging for sale. We use USDA processors in Michigan and Indiana depending on species and the processor’s specialties. We have used an MDARD-inspected processor for ground turkey which may only be sold to in-state customers; once these packages are sold out we will not have any non-USDA-inspected meat and will have USDA-inspected ground poultry available.