Member Account Questions

How does the Installment Plan Work?

If you opted to pay in installments, here is the schedule to expect:

Spring Subscriptions: There are no installment options for the Spring CSA. We ask our members to pay for all four weeks of deliveries in full at time of sign-up.

Summer Subscriptions: There are 4 installment payments for the Summer CSA. The first installment is due at signup. The second installment falls on the first week of Summer deliveries. The third installment is 30 days after the second. The fourth installment is 30 days after the third.

Winter Subscriptions: There are 4 installment payments for the Winter CSA. The first installment is due at signup. The second installment falls on the first week of deliveries. The third installment is 30 days after the second. The fourth installment is 30 days after the third.

You can view your specific installment payments inside your CSAware account. Log in, then go to "view/modify subscription", from there you can see how many installment payments remain (at the bottom), and the date of your last payment.

Understanding How Featherstone Prices Crops

If you’ve read through our CSA Member Success page, you know that the Featherstone Farm Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program aims to offer significant value for your investment by bringing you super-fresh, nutrient-dense vegetables, fruits, herbs, and greens. We also aim to bring you extra value through your relationship with the farm, which encompasses everything from our newsletters to on-farm events.

As part of this direct producer-consumer relationship, we strive to be as transparent as possible about how your food gets from our soil in southeastern Minnesota’s bluff country to your plate. And that transparency includes how we price each item in your box.

In a typical CSA, you pay a flat fee and get a “share” of the harvest that might be larger or significantly smaller from year to year, depending on the overall success of the season.

But the Featherstone Farm CSA has always attached a price to the items that go into your box. Even though you’ve already paid for the items through your membership, this practice enables us to ensure that members are really getting a good value.

How We Set Individual Crop Prices

You can find the individual crop prices on the See what’s in my box page on your member account.

Currently, these prices are set to be comparable to what you might pay at a food co-op or Whole Foods Market.

When a crop is priced higher than you might expect to pay at a co-op, you’ll find a brief note explaining why. For example, organic green beans are seldom available in stores, period. When they do show up, they are most often machine-picked and bagged at a processing plant (read: cheap!). At Featherstone Farm, we pick all beans by hand, and bag them up just before packing in your box. Fresher green beans means better taste and nutrition…but there is no way to do this at the same price point as California green beans. Therefore, they will be more expensive, and we’ll explain why.

Sometimes, you’ll find that we have discounted a crop below what you might expect to pay at the store. This almost always happens at the peak of the item’s season, when we have an abundant harvest. For example, when red bell peppers peak in early September, we may discount them by 10-30%, depending on the crop size. We’ll notify you of these discounted items in your box customization email.

Our long-term goal is to make all our vegetable prices reflect the actual costs of production at Featherstone Farm, rather than market prices at high-end retailers. We’re a four-season farm located in the “wet” Midwest; the costs of producing organic vegetables locally aren’t the same as industrial-scale horticultural operations located in the desert southwest.

Even though you may pay more for local crops than for crops shipped in from California, you’re still getting a good value when you consider the improved taste, freshness, nutrition, and environmental impact of locally grown foods.

Featherstone green and purple beans are picked by hand at their peak.

Why Your Box Value Changes Over the Season

One of the cool things about getting your food from a local CSA is that you’re more plugged into the rhythms of the growing season. That rhythm is reflected in the value of your farm box, too.

In previous years, CSAware valued each CSA box equally. So, for example, each of the 18 boxes in the Sustainer Share would be priced the same (e.g., the price of the membership, $799, would be divided by 18 for a per-box value of $44.38).

However, local agriculture produces more variety and volume in August and September than in June or October. That’s why in 2024 we began pricing boxes to reflect the “real world” bell curve of seasonal production. For example, the first Sustainer box in June is now valued at $30, while several peak-season boxes in late August through mid-September are valued at $58.

Why does this matter? Allowing the value of the box to fluctuate means less food waste for members over the course of the season. Rather than trying to boost the value of a June box by allocating multiple heads of Romaine, for example, CSAware allocates a little less produce to each box early and late in the season, when there is less variety and quantity, but more produce at the peak of the season when members can best take advantage of high crop volume and variety.

But Wait…There’s More!

Now, if you add up the value of all the items in your box over the course of the season, you might notice that you actually get a little bit more than what you pay for at the start of the season—about 4% more for the Sustainer Share, and 2% for the Solo Share.

In addition, your membership also includes two annual on-farm events (the Spring Social and the Fall Harvest Party) as well as newsletters, recipes, educational videos, and other “behind the scenes” communications. Jack likes to say that Featherstone is like a great local restaurant that leaves the kitchen door open so you can see how your food is being prepared.

We hope that you find our pricing transparency enhances your Featherstone Farm experience! If you have questions about a particular item or just want to know more, reach out at csa@featherstonefarm.com.

Can I change my CSA Subscription?

Yes!

If you want to change your subscription in any way (different pick up location, switch to a different available pick up day, upgrade from a Solo to a Sustainer share, downgrade from a Sustainer to a Solo share, cancel your subscription, move your Winter share credits to a Summer share, etc.) at any time before or during your subscription, please email Nicole at csa@featherstonefarm.com and we will do our best to accommodate your requests! Our biggest limiting factors are truck space and pickup location limits given to us by our hosts, so we may not be able to meet your request immediately.

Subscription Management Questions

Our member software is CSAware, you can log in here.

  • We currently offer two add-on options: seasonal Egg subscriptions and a summer Garlic subscription. These are only available in addition to a CSA subscription (farm box) and cannot be purchased by themselves. If you are signed up for a CSA subscription, you can add an Egg or Garlic subscription to your order at any time before or during the CSA season. These items will be packed in your box and delivered with your order.

  • We currently have 3 different subscription options: Spring, Summer, and Winter. We treat each subscription separately: there are different location times and days available for each subscription, there are different quantities of shares available for each subscription, there are different box values and items available for each subscription, and each subscription renews at a different time of year - if you are signed up for two or more (Spring, Summer, Winter), each will auto-renew individually and independently of one another. If you opt out of auto-renewal for your Summer subscription, your Winter subscription will still automatically renew until you opt out.

  • We will refund the amount of the individual item back to your member account for you to use when you customize a different box. Email Nicole at csa@featherstonefarm.com with details about your damaged or missing items as soon as possible for an accurate refund.

  • Check out How To Customize Your Box

  • At Featherstone, you have the option of rescheduling or donating your box if you will be unavailable to pick it up. For detailed instructions and a video walk-through, see our page all about Rescheduling Your Box.

    Here's a quick overview:

    1. Log into your CSAware account.

    2. Use the calendar on the dashboard to choose the date you will be gone.

    3. The software brings up the page for that day's delivery. Click on the Reschedule button.

    3. The software will prompt you to select another date to pick up that box. Make your selection and confirm.

    4. Now when you check the calendar, you should see the "rescheduled" color code on the day you will be gone, and the "multiple boxes" color code on the day you rescheduled for.

    On that date, you will be able to pick up two boxes of that week's crops.

    To donate, follow steps 1 and 2 above, then select the Donate button. As of this writing, donated boxes are delivered to the SEMCAC food shelf.

  • At Featherstone Farm, we use an auto-renew feature to make CSA membership renewal simple and convenient for our members while supporting our farm’s planning process. Auto-renewal helps secure your spot before shares sell out and ensures we can purchase seeds and supplies early in the season.

    How Auto-Renew Works

    • Automatic Enrollment: If you had a CSA share last season, you will be automatically re-enrolled for the same share size and pickup location for the upcoming season.

    • Billing & Payment Plan: Your selected payment plan from last season (full payment or installment plan) will carry over unless you update it.

    • Notification & Deadlines: We will send email reminders before the auto-renew date. Members have until the stated opt-out deadline to make changes or cancel their renewal.

    See our page all about Autorenewal here.

  • You can modify your subscription, indicate your crop preferences, customize your weekly farm box, reschedule your next delivery, donate your next delivery, change payment information, and much more through your CSAware account. You can log into your account by clicking on the green login button at the top right of every page on our website, or clicking here. To learn about managing your member account, see Your Member Account.

    CSAware is designed and maintained by Local Line. If you have questions, comments, or complaints, you can send them to us at csa@FeatherstoneFarm.com, and we will pass them along to Local Line.

  • Send an email to csa@featherstonefarm.com and Nicole will help you login and navigate your account. Email makes it easier for me to find your account information quickly, but if you prefer a phone call, have your account info ready and call Nicole at 507-429-2003