What happens to my box if I’m out of town one week?
We encourage you to have somebody else come pick up your box and enjoy the fruit! The CSA is a whole season commitment and already paid in full. We don’t do partial reimbursements for weeks out of town, so please try and plan ahead. If you aren’t able to find somebody else to come pick up your box, please let us know and we will cancel your box delivery for the week.
What happens if I can’t find my box?
This year we are not having names on the box so you can come to the pick up site, grab a box, and check your name off on the list! There may be a few specially marked boxes in certain instances that we will try and communicate ahead of time (for example, folks with fig allergies get specially marked boxes).
What happens if there are no boxes left at the pick-up site?
We try to bring an extra box to many of the sites in case of disaster (usually a dropped box), so there will hopefully be an extra one there that you can grab. But! If there really aren’t any left, first contact your site host to make sure they hadn’t brought it inside (to keep it out of heat, away from animals, etc.). The next step will be to send us an email and we will coordinate a way to get you a box.
Why doesn’t my box look exactly like somebody else’s box?
Every box is different! We try our darnedest to get each box the exact same amount of fruit each week, but there are always slight variations that are based on fruit size, and dare we say it, some slight human error in calculating exactly how much fruit we have available each week. We understand it can sometimes be frustrating, but we are trying our hardest and ask you all to be understanding as we are constantly trying to get better about making estimations when packing the boxes.
How do I know which fruit is which in the box?
This year we are going to try and send a photo of the boxes each week, with labels of each section in the box to help folks delineate which fruit is which in the box!
How do I know when the fruit is ripe?
We aim to pick all of our fruit when it is “tree ripe.” However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the fruit will be soft and ready to eat. It means that we leave the fruit on the trees quite a bit longer than big commercial farms for the flavor to continue developing and ripen. We can’t leave the fruit on the trees until it’s ready to eat, because by the time it gets to the consumer, the peaches will all be overly ripe and bruised. So, to ripen the peaches at home, just leave them on the counter! If you want to leave a few for later in the week, throw them in the fridge and pull them out a couple days later. Other than the tried-and-true method of testing ripeness by squeezing the fruit, which leaves it bruised, try smelling the fruit, as the sugar levels do increase as they ripen. Another thing that we like to do is just pick the fruit up, and if it feels like it just slightly compresses, or almost feels like it melts into your hand, then it’s ripe! And one final method is to look at the top of the fruit (where the stem was) and look at the color. If there is any green, then wait for the color to change. The exact color of ripeness does change with every fruit variety, but the coloring should end up being consistent across the whole fruit. And remember to be patient as there is nothing like a perfectly ripe peach to make your day, or an under-ripe peach to bum you out.
What is the distribution of the fruit going to be?
We try to get as much variety in each box as possible! Our orchard, and the weather, doesn’t always allow us an even distribution throughout the summer, or even in any particular box. So expect some weeks to have a lot of apricots, and another week to have a lot of peaches, and another week to have a lot of nectarines! Early season we usually have boxes that are heavier with apricots, then it evens out a bit, then we become heavy with nectarines, and by the end of the summer we are heavy with peaches. The heat is what determines how quickly each variety ripens, so we have just got to roll with the heat waves and pick what’s ready, regardless of whether or not we already have 3 or 4 other varieties ripe at the same time!