We have to make sure we have enough different things that we can put in the box year
round, and that they won’t be the same week after week. For example, it’s OK to put
6
carrots in the box every week. It’s OK to put salad mix or oranges in the box every single
week too. But you can’t put cabbage in the box week after week in the wintertime. And
people will even get tired of kale, so you want to have chard and kale and bok choy.
We’ve gotten better and better at making sure we can change the contents of the box in a
positive way every single week.
CSAs must also find ways to offer variety within the constraints of the relatively limited number
of crops that can be produced throughout the year. That is often accomplished by growing a
number of different varieties of the same crop.
We definitely grow more variety because we want variety for our boxes. It looks really
nice to have that stuff at the farmers’ market, but we could get by with two varieties of
potatoes. But, because we have potatoes for so long during the year, we like to have 5 or
six varieties for our CSA members.