What is a Bouquet CSA? {Part 2}

Continuing with our mini series on answering your questions about our Charlottesville bouquet CSA.

In the last post, I covered what exactly a CSA is and listed out a few benefits to our customers. Today I want to share how a CSA supports and benefits the farmer:

Benefits to the FARMER

🌸 Running a CSA creates and builds community among our customers and builds the farmer ➡️ customer relationship. We absolutely love and prefer selling directly to customers and getting to know you!

🌸 Having CSA members to sign up for weekly or monthly flowers throughout our growing season in the winter months enables us to plan out the amount of crops we grow. Will we have 40 members or 100? We can plan for either, but once the field is planted out we are more limited in how many members to take on. For example, if we know in February that we have 35 customers who have purchased 16 weeks of flowers for the upcoming season, then that gives us a good estimate as to how many zinnia seeds we will need to plant during each of our 3 successions. We always plant more, but knowing the number of CSA shares that are purchased ahead of time help us plan out our field production.

🌸Having the customers purchase before the start of the growing season provides needed income over the winter when 90% of farm purchasing takes place. This includes: seeds, tender bulbs, flower food, irrigation equipment, compost, organic fertilizers, and other tools.

Am I missing anything? If you are a farmer, what are some other benefits of running a CSA to your farm?