As outlined in our agreement with CSA clients, if you are unable to (or forget to) pick-up your produce on your designated pick-up day you have the following options: 

a. Send someone else to pick-up your veggies

b. Come during one of our other pick-ups

c. Your share is donated to the Sackville Food Bank

 While this is fundamentally very easy to understand, to be completely transparent and open about our practices we offer the following explanation:

 Over the years we have donated quite a lot of produce to the Sackville Food Bank.  Unfortunately for lots of reasons we cannot guarantee exactly every share not picked up goes to the food bank.  Here are some of the factors:

1.         The food bank is only open on Wednesday; therefore, any produce left on either Thursday or Saturday has a poor chance of being edible by Wednesday;

2.         We have a policy with our members that if they miss a pick-up they are welcome to come to one of the other pick-ups (we do three per week).  While this often works out well (essentially, they pick-up the food that they “donated” on a different day) it has resulted in us bringing extra food and still getting caught “short” on occasion.  In reality, there is not very much “no show” produce left anymore;

3.         We track how much produce our members get and ensure that they get good value.  This process includes only recording what was either picked up or donated.  No-show produce that is resold is not charged to the CSA account, any day of the week.  This essentially means that every person who comes to the pick-up gets more food than they are “charged” for;

4.         Saturday is the only day we can “resell” any unclaimed produce and considering the time it would have to spend in the hot food bank, we often choose to resell the produce rather than have it go to waste.  In 2011 we had anticipated making a lump sum donation to the food bank at the end of the season to make sure that we kept things straight and kept within the spirit of our CSA agreement.  As it turns out, we hope to have a surplus of storage carrots and to deliver carrots in bulk to the food bank throughout the winter months; and

5.         Considering that Ruth and I share about 140 hrs of work a week with little assisted childcare and the most we have earned in 5 years of farming is $2.65/hr, when there is only a half share leftover and we are all hungry, we eat it -  it beats us going to the food bank.