Seasonal CSA

What is a Seasonal CSA?

Seasonal CSA is when people purchase a share of weekly food (veggies and/or meat) ahead of each season and then come each week to pick up their bounty. Seasons range from 8-14 weeks long. We create a lively and welcoming in-person free-choice style open market pick up wherein you come and get to know our farm team and get to choose the veggies/meat that catches your eye and fits with your meal plan!

Vegetable CSA Sizes

We offer three sizes of seasonal vegetable CSA: small (4 items), medium (8 items), or large (10 items). An “item” is roughly one bunch or pound of a vegetable. (i.e. one bunch of kale, one head of lettuce, 1 lb of apples, 1.5 lbs of potatoes). 

Bulk Meat sizes

We also offer seasonal bulk meat options at 15lbs, 30lbs, and 45lbs. These are like a running tab in that they have no set end time. You can take the meat as slowly or quickly as you’d like.

What food options might I find at pick up?

We work closely with our local partner farms to be able to offer the quantity and breadth of food that we do! Click HERE to learn more about our partner farms and to be directed to a list of all of the variety of foods (vegetables/meats/add ons) you might find at pick up throughout the year!

Where do we pick up our food?

Pick up is right outside (or inside weather dependent) our farm store here at Bread & Butter Farm, located at 200 Leduc Farm Rd, Shelburne, VT. 

2024 Seasonal CSA Dates, Number of Weeks, and Pick up Day/Time

Flexible pick up options

We also offer a pre-packaged CSA option for those who can’t make it to the in-person time frame. You’ll have access to a weekly online form that you can fill out with your wishlist of veggies/meat and the day you’d like to pick it up.

Sliding scale payments

We are proud to offer a sliding scale option for our seasonal CSA members. Please read more about it at the bottom of this page.

Missed Weeks

If you need to miss a week or more of pick ups, you have some options!

1. You can always donate the share to a friend or family member to come pick up instead

2. You can pick up the missed number of items when you return (please know, due to seasonality and the unknown nature of farming, some items are more limited at pick up than others and cannot be taken more than once)

3. Food does not roll over to new seasons, but please know we understand how life throws curveballs and are here to work with you for extenuating circumstances!

Payment Plans

We offer a three-part payment plan to anyone who needs this option. The first payment is due at time of first pick up and the remaining two are billed on the 10th of each month. 

OUR SLIDING-SCALE PAYMENT MODEL

We are incredibly proud to offer a sliding scale payment model. We first launched this in Winter 2022 with great success!

 Why A Sliding Scale? The sliding scale model has been in the works for a while at Bread and Butter. We have been working over the years to get to a sturdy enough place with this small business whereby we can start to think about supporting our community on a deeper financial level.

We believe that access to healthy and culturally appropriate food is a birthright.  Access to that food, financially and geographically, is a problem in this country and right here in our own town.

Many folks here in our local communities face real socioeconomic barriers to eating our food. The sliding scale model is one small step towards acknowledging and fighting these injustices. 

High quality, organic, nutrient-dense food is often targeted for its price point. To speak to this briefly, we price our food intentionally and in a way that: strives to compensate our farmers with more than minimum wage, honors that our growing practices are rebuilding the lost soils of our land, and supports the farm in avoiding debt and exceeding the goal of breaking even at the end of each year. 

We can't emphasize enough that what we do here at Bread and Butter isn't just a fun showcase of a "cute" pastoral farm life — we are trying to change the culture of the mind to remind people that food is at the heart of our health and thus, the health of our communities and the planet. We firmly believe that we MUST invest our resources of energy, money and time back into helping each other fuel our bodies and thereby fuel our communities, with the highest nutrient-dense food there is. 

We owe it to ourselves and to one another. 

With that at the forefront of our minds, the reason why we feel we can trial the sliding scale model this winter is because we have tremendous faith in YOU, our community, and it takes a huge leap of faith to feel like this is possible — thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

SO… how does it work? 

The sliding scale model creates an opportunity for you to be a PART of this work. It takes a moment of self reflection on your personal finances and life situation in order to understand how you can plug into the pricing breakdown. In a sliding scale model, we ask participants to pay different amounts for a product, based upon each individual’s situation.

Many of you have participated in our Solidarity Share program this past year, supporting others when you had extra resources and receiving support when you did not. We are excited to now offer a model of payment that includes a breadth of financial options so that you can contribute to our work as you are able without having to take many (if any) extra steps.

If you are able to contribute at a higher level, it offsets the cost of the lesser-priced shares. This also eliminates the burden on folks who may need financial assistance from  having to take extra steps to obtain help. We hope that this honors the spirit of our Solidarity program in a more dignified way; we want everyone to feel that they are equally part of our community. 

We are asking everyone to do their part in making an honest assessment of their own financial/life situation. We recognize that there are many complex personal and contextual factors that may go into this decision, the following is intended to be a starting point to help guide you in thinking about this. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you are in need of support navigating this model.

Assessment Breakdown

Consider paying more when you:

• Own your home

• Have retirement accounts, investment, or inherited money

• Have access to family money and resources in times of need

• If you hold white privilege

Consider paying less when you:

• Are supporting children, other dependents, or sending remittances

• Have significant debt

• Have medical expenses not covered by insurance

• Are on fixed income or receive public assistance

• Identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color)

*Referencing the sliding scale model at Beech Hill Farm in Maine

You can find the sliding scale breakdowns per season HERE on our online store.