Community Supported Agriculture for the Upper Valley of New Hampshire and Vermont

Join the Farm

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, a collaborative approach to food where consumers and farmers work together. Individuals “join” the farm each spring, purchasing in advance a season’s worth of the freshest vegetables money can buy. The farmers, meanwhile, know exactly what to grow and can tailor the harvest to best suit their members’ needs.

Besides bringing people together to celebrate local food and strengthen local agriculture, a CSA farm offers a strong financial incentive to consumer and farmer alike. At Sunrise Farm, we price our farm share so that it represents a 30 percent discount over the equivalent basket of food at the market - a great savings for the consumer. As farmers, meanwhile, we are receiving 70 percent of the food dollar, which is seven times what the typical wholesale farmer receives in the United States these days.

The CSA concept first came to the United States in 1985, when Indian Line Farm in western Massachusetts adopted a CSA-style approach to farming that was already gaining popularity in Japan and Europe. New England became an early CSA hotbed, and Caretaker Farm in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where Chuck apprenticed in 1995, was one of the very first organic/biodynamic CSA farms in the country.

There are now thousands of CSA farms across the country, with more than a dozen in the Upper Valley offering some sort of CSA program. In recent years, the CSA idea has become more of an approach to marketing (often one approach among many on a single farm) than a style of farming. At Sunrise, we subscribe to the original vision of CSA farming: everything we grow is distributed exclusively to our members.

Just as much as it is about fresh food, Sunrise Farm is also about the rural experience. Shareholders come to the farm each week to gather their vegetables, pick fresh herbs, scratch the pigs’ ears, sit on the tractor (especially popular among young boys - don’t worry, we take the key out of the ignition!), or walk the miles of trails that leave from the farm.

CSA enthusiasts tend to be people who enjoy eating vegetables, like to know where their food is coming from and who is growing it, like a good bargain, take pleasure in cooking, and enjoy taking a few minutes each week to visit a farm. Come join us!