Renew Your Share
If you're not a current shareholder, and you'd like to purchase a share for 2025 - please click here.
Dear Friends,
The hills are starting to show the first flashes of red, yellow and orange. We’re spending our days bringing in thousands of pounds of root crops to store away for the winter under beautiful autumn skies. While we’re still busy with the harvest season, our thoughts are already turning to 2025. As we wrap up fields, harrow and seed cover crop, we start to dream a bit. Maybe we'll add a new crop to the crop plan, tweak the pick your own or add a fun new event to the schedule. Where should the garlic go and what fields should we put our early crops in?
Now is the time we turn to you, our community, and ask you to start dreaming along with us and start thinking about the season to come. We are thrilled to announce that we are opening up CSA renewals for the 2025 Regular season share at Brookfield Farm.
In some ways it's hard to believe we will be completing our fourth season managing Brookfield Farm. The season starts out with what seems like ample time ahead of us and by the time fall comes along, the days start to whip by and if you don't take a moment to look at the beautiful fall leaves, you seem to miss them and before you know it, the year is over. That being said, four years is enough time to really get a sense of the farm. The soil under our nails is almost permanent and we have developed an understanding of the land we work with to produce so much goodness. We know where the wet and dry spots are in the fields and when we can start farming them in the spring, the weed communities that live their and even the critter communities that affect those fields. While we can't help the weather that mother nature throws at us, being in tune with the fields can help us mitigate it.
After three years of rather unkind weather (a flood year, then a drought year and then another flood year), we thought "this year has got to be a normal year". And would you believe it, it more or less was? No crazy early frosts, no wind storms to rip our row cover off our early plantings and just enough rain to keep the crops watered without us having to go into irrigation over drive. Even the dry spell right now is pretty manageable with our irrigation. Dry weather during harvest season keeps disease down and assures our crop quality it good and keeps harvesting easy (no trudging through mud getting trucks and tractors stuck). The fall crops are abundant and beautiful and we are so happy to share the abundance with you!
But we know not every year is going to be like this. While we celebrate in this years fall riches, many across the country are struggleing with extreme weather and we know some years we'll have challenges and you'll be right there by our sides then too. That is the beauty of a CSA.
Putting seeds in the dark, cold ground in the spring and hoping that those seeds grow is an act of faith. We do what we can to put our crops in the best position to succeed. We spread compost, we kill weeds, we fret and worry over them, but ultimately a large part of it is completely out of our hands. The seeds germinate or they don’t. We can’t force them to. Regardless of the weather, regardless of what is happening in the world, we grow food. It’s what we do and we could not do it without you. This is why we love the CSA model: all of us support each other at the start of a new season, not knowing what it will bring, but willing to take the risk jointly as a community.
Share pricing will remain the same as in 2025. After much deliberation we will be shortening the regular season share by two weeks (the end date in 2025 will be November 8). This will allow us to better wrap up the growing season, give us a much needed break, save our apprentices from freezing cold late November evenings in the share and put us more in line with other farms in the Valley(most of whom end at the end of October.)
We know how important having Brookfield Farm produce for your Thanksgiving table is so we will be opening the farm for a Thanksgiving Store the Saturday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving. We will have a one off Thanksgiving share option for those of you who want that, or you would just be able to come and purchase as much, or as little produce as you want. We will still do Diemand Farm Turkey distribution as well as have other great local products for sale.
Boston folks, you will also have the Thanksgiving share option and a bulk order delivery the Thursday before Thanksgiving.
We are keeping the renewal process the same as last year and are asking that you renew your share by October 18. After that time, we will fill the rest of the shares on a first-come, first-served basis. Please do not delay, we don’t want to lose you!
Thank you all so much, whether this was your first season or you have been a member since the beginning. You are a part of this farm, and we couldn’t exist without you. We sincerely hope that you will join us again in 2025. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to feed your family and do what we love in a place we love so much. We can’t wait to do it again next year!
Your farmers,
Max and Kerry (on behalf of Abbe, Bonnie, Ellie, Larry, Megan and Ryan)
We are aware that these uncertain times make financial decisions more difficult than usual.
Here are some ways we are working to help make our farm share affordable for everyone who wants one:
You can now renew your share with a $20 deposit now and create your own personalized payment plan moving forward (see below)
We are able to accept HIP and/or SNAP benefits, which can be used for nearly 100% of the cost of the share (click button below and we will send you more info)
We have an established, limited “Donor Supported Share Fund,” to subsidize the share cost for people in need who don’t qualify for SNAP / HIP (please see below)
please contact us if you have any questions about any of this information.