Customizing and Scheduling
Your Farm Box

CSA Your Way

One of the great things about a Featherstone farm box subscription is that, unlike most other farm box subscriptions, you get to choose what comes in your box.

Love rutabagas? (Don’t laugh—we have some customers who do!) Great! Set your preferences at the beginning of the season to get more of them, and the CSAware software will give you more rutabagas when they’re ready to harvest. Don’t like tomatoes? No problem! Move the tomato preference slider all the way to the left so that you don’t get any.

But wait, there’s more! Every week, you will receive an email prompting you to customize the contents of the coming week’s box. For a few days, you will be able to add or subtract the number of items in your box. You could, for example, add an extra bag of potatoes while zeroing out all the beets. This is especially handy when you have leftovers from the previous week’s box.

What if you are going to be gone for a few weeks? You have several options:

  1. You can set a vacation hold, meaning that you can get an extra box later in the season.

  2. You can donate your box and we’ll bring it to a food shelf.

  3. You can have a friend pick it up for you.

Pretty convenient, right?

By now, you’re probably itching to go set the preferences on your account…and wondering just where you go to get started. You can find step-by-step instructions on this page:

How to Customize Your CSA Farm Box — Featherstone Farm

You can also check out the step-by-step video walkthrough at the bottom of this page.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays are box packing days at the farm. Here are some of the people who pack your box!

Common Questions

Why are some vegetables displayed on my box customization, but when I try to add them to my box, they aren’t available?

Some crops may be no longer available once you try to customize your box because of limited quantities, and what was available was taken by other members first.

In general, the earlier you customize your box after the box customization window opens, the more likely you are to get the items you want. However, as members continue to customize their boxes, some items may become temporarily available again, so if you really have your heart set on a particular item, check back occasionally.

Why are the quantities of some vegetable so limited?

This can be for a few reasons:

  • Sometimes, we’re trying out a new, experimental crop, and we purposely invest in a smaller planting during our “test run.” If everything works out one season, you may see more availability for that item going forward.

  • Some crops are extremely fickle or challenging to grow in Minnesota’s wet, four-season climate. (Watch our website posts, social media, and newsletters for specific examples of this.) We might plant plenty of beans or broccoli, only to see them mostly wiped out by disease in a really wet year. This is one of the realities of organically grown, local eating.

  • Other times, we might fail to accurately predict member demand. Generally, CSAware is good at helping us forecast demand so we can plant enough of the veggies people really like…but then, who would have predicted the cauliflower craze of 2016? Not us!

That’s all for now. Next, check out other articles in the CSA Success Series.

As always, please reach out to our CSA manager, Karin, by email or phone if you have any questions or concerns: csa@featherstonefarm.com or 507-864-2400.