CSA Membership

Our winter and spring CSA (community supported agriculture) program is the heart of our farm. It runs late November to mid May and includes up to 23 weeks of veggies, flowers, herbs, and more - all picked up by CSA members on our farm in south Sebastopol. By becoming a CSA member, you enter into a deep relationship with this land and us as your farmers; every week we provide delicious, healthy food to you and you offer us a dependable market and caring community to eat our products. CSA members also have access to our ½ acre u-pick garden, filled with flowers, herbs, and a few cozy places to sit. 

  • Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a method of selling food that directly connects farmers to the folks eating their food. Think of it as a farm membership program, where when you commit to support the farm for a season and we commit to share its abundance with you. For Winter Sister Farm, the community portion of this idea is deeply important. We hope that the farm feels like part of your community when you pick up each week - a place to see friends and neighbors, to hang out in our garden, to chat about the produce with your farmers, and to connect to the landscape.

    CSA also a beautiful way to share both the highs and lows of farming with you all. As members of the farm, we offer you with as much as the farm can provide, but with the understanding that the act of farming is entering into a relationship with nature and as such, is not fully predictable. In that sense, the risk you take embarking on the season with us is more acute than some traditional summer CSAs because the weather is more extreme: wind, rain, frosts, and flooding can cause crop loss at the most extreme, but also simply inhibit plant growth and lock us out of our fields and prevent planting. We plan all we can to offer safegaurds to bad weather, but a windstorm or flood event might just mean we have a little less variety than expected. While these risks are real, the reward to joining us on this journey is also high. The foods we provide are hard earned, delicious, and rare: the carrots are sweetened by the frost, the radishes are tender without heat to add spice, the asparagus is the juiciest you’ll ever have, you won’t find purple sprouting broccoli available at any other time of year. Winter and spring in our region can be delicious, if you give it the chance!

  • 2024-2025 CSA season will have 2 potential start dates:

    • our main 23-week season will run from November 23 - May 13

    • a delayed start 20-week option will run December 14 - May 13

    We will have two break weeks in the season when the farm will be closed to give the farmers and fields a small rest:

    • We will be closed Saturday, 12/28/2024 and Tuesday, 12/31/2024.

    • We will be closed Saturday, 03/01/2025 and Tuesday, 03/04/2025

CSA options:

We have two pickup styles for CSA memberships:

Free Choice & Farmer’s Choice

  • Free-choice options have two share sizes and start dates, and are best for those who like to select their own produce items and are able to get to the farm during our market-style pickup hours.

  • Farmer’s choice boxes are best for those who need more flexible pickup hours. We’ll pack you a box each week with a balanced array of produce items, with an exchange box so you can always swap out an item!

Both pickup styles include access to our u-pick garden for flowers and herbs. More garden details below!

Use this chart to help you decide which share is right for you!

Farmer’s choice Box Share

Free-choice Small Share

Free-choice Large Share

The Garden

All CSA memberships include access to our U-Pick Garden for fresh flowers and herbs. Items picked from the garden are above and beyond your main CSA share and do not count toward your item limit or the number of items in your box. There is no additional cost to anything picked in the garden.

Our 1/2 acre u-pick garden is planted with both annual and perennial herbs and flowers for members to enjoy. Access to the space, including anything picked from it, is fully included in any CSA membership. Picking guidelines and limits are posted in the farmstand. Members are welcome to use the space to hang out, picnic, play, swing on our swing, and pick herbs or flowers during pickup times.

In the early days of winter, some lingering fall crops like fuyu persimmons and prickly pear fruit may be harvestable (depending on weather) as well as the hardiest herbs. As we go into the darkest, wettest days of winter, harvests from the garden will likely be relatively minimal (trusty rosemary and winter thyme will be your friends!). But in the early days of spring, flowers will begin popping up, herbs will start growing fast and the garden bounty will increase. This is the part of the farm where the seasonal shifts are seen and felt the most, and where we welcome you to connect directly with our plants and soil.

The garden is open for picking and hanging out during your CSA pickup times, whether a free-choice or farmer’s choice box share member. If its not time to get veggies, the garden is closed.

Community Support Fund

We are implementing a community support fund as a way of making our CSA more accessible to our community. Think of this as a sliding scale. If you are financially able, when you register, we would love for folks to give within their means to our Community Support Fund. If the share price is prohibitive for you, check a box when you register and we will redistribute some of the money given to the fund to cover a portion of your share cost. 

Farm Orientation

Please note: because our CSA is set up a little differently than others and because harvesting from the garden may be new for some, all new members will be required to have a farm orientation during the first few weeks of the season. We will send more information to registered members once the season is drawing closer. 

Refunds

Because of the nature of a CSA farm, we spend your membership dues soon after we receive them for things like labor, seeds, compost, and all the other things it takes up front to grow food for you. Because of this, we generally cannot offer refunds for membership dues. Please sign up knowing that we are making a mutual commitment to each other. If you need to unexpectedly end your membership midseason, it will be your responsibility to find someone to replace you. Exceptions may be made for serious and unforeseen events like illness.