347183 Fri Dec 01 00:54:05 -0800 2006 17 1 San Francisco Bay Area 0 2060446 Hi. I just moved to the city and am looking for a quality CSA for weekly boxes of produce, etc. I live in the Inner Sunset and can pick up anywhere in the city. What are the best CSA's that come to SF? Thanks. Fri Dec 01 00:54:05 -0800 2006 56825 Tom S. 1 2061982 Here are most of the CSAs that deliver to San Francisco (I may be forgetting one or two): Two Small Farms (One of the two farms is Mariquita, which also sells at the Ferry Plaza.) www.twosmallfarms.com However, they've just finished their season for the year, and won't start up again until March. Farm Fresh to You (Capay) www.farmfreshtoyou.com Terra Firma Farm www.terrafirmafarm.com Eatwell Farm www.eatwell.com Most if not all of them should deliver near you. After weighing the options, we decided to go with Terra Firma, because their large box has enough veggies and fruit for us to use for most of the week, with a little supplementing from a farmer's market. But we're vegetarians and cook almost every night, so your needs may be completely different from ours. I would say the produce is average to amazing, depending, and the variety is good, although I wish they would have more exotic vegetables -- they don't stray much from the standards except for some things like bok choy and fava beans. We tried switching to Two Small Farms for that very reason, and the quality of the produce was consistently fantastic--but we felt like the box was designed to be used by people who use veggies mostly for their side dishes, and we ended up spending a lot more at the farmer's market, so we switched back. We also decided this year to unsubscribe from Terra Firma during the summer--we just don't like corn and melons enough, and prefer the flexibility of shopping at the market for those months. There are some great discussions on the board about what people like and don't like about their CSAs: www.chowhound.com/topics/38414 -- this one includes my review of Terra Firma. Note that it's about the East Bay, so some of the farms, including River Dog and, sadly, Full Belly, don't deliver to San Francisco. www.chowhound.com/topics/44470 -- Eatwell and Capay reviews www.chowhound.com/topics/34653 Hope this helps -- I moved here after 6 years in Boston a couple of years ago and still feel amazingly blessed to be living someplace where we have so many choices and can buy local produce and support local farmers year round. Fri Dec 01 17:43:47 -0800 2006 2060446 18984 Emily Hope 2 2063205 thanks. that's very helpful. i will check them out and make a decision..... Sat Dec 02 01:01:36 -0800 2006 2061982 56825 Tom S. 1 2062077 Capay / Farm Fresh to You has grown well beyond the usual CSA model. They've got 240 acres, two retail stores, a wholesale operation, and a mail-order business. The retail operation alone has at least 12 employees. The boxes are distributed from Sacramento to San Jose. Most CSAs sell only what they produce or occasionally supplement with produce from neighboring farms. Capay sells bananas. Maybe they don't put them in their CSA boxes, but it's not quite the close connection between consumer and small family farm that I want. Fri Dec 01 18:06:27 -0800 2006 2060446 11369 Robert Lauriston 2 2062901 Granted they may be a bigger operation and have certainly expanded (succeeded) beyond what they started as - but I wouldn't rule them out as a CSA. If you don't want bananas, you don't have to get them. You can customize your boxes from them, they have a couple of different sizes and styles of boxes (fruit only for example) and they do deliver to your doorstep vs. the drop off only locations of many of the other CSAs. I also subscribe to Eatwell and would recommend either one of these. The Capay/Farm Fresh box tends to be a bit bigger than Eatwell's most of the time, but the items are similar from both from week to week. Eatwell has offered eggs in the past (although the chickens aren't producing well at the moment so that may not be an option for newer subscribers) and you can order their lavendar products too. Fri Dec 01 22:40:57 -0800 2006 2062077 10410 Celery 2 2929461 I never get bananas in my Capay box and I don't ask for anything custom. Mon Sep 10 23:14:03 -0700 2007 2062077 15083 sgwood415 3 2930487 They offer a dozen different subscriptions. See the photos of bananas on this page: http://www.farmfreshtoyou.com/organic_snack_pack.php Tue Sep 11 09:19:55 -0700 2007 2929461 11369 Robert Lauriston 4 2931393 Yep, they are definitely showing bananas on their website for their snack packs. I get the small mixed box (fruit & veggies) and haven't gotten a banana, but some of the items are definitely not from our area. Cilantro from Mexico was a recent example. Tue Sep 11 12:50:35 -0700 2007 2930487 15083 sgwood415 5 2931694 No excuse for that, there's great cilantro around here this time of year. Tue Sep 11 13:48:09 -0700 2007 2931393 11369 Robert Lauriston 6 2931776 Yep, it was pretty surprising. This was about 2 months ago. Tue Sep 11 14:06:20 -0700 2007 2931694 15083 sgwood415 1 2062666 We've been very happy with Two Small Farms. This was a tough year, weather wise, but in the past several years we've always enjoyed the variety and quality of their box. Our family of two adults/1 small child shares with another couple in our neighborhood, so we're not overwhelmed. We could never use a full box on our own, but splitting it is perfect, with occasional supplements of Asian vegetables, which we really don't get in the box. We do get fabulous escarole, peppers, tomatillos, kale, chard, broccoli, leeks, cippoline onions and the very sweetest strawberries. Oh, that's about the only fruit in the TSF box (occasional apples, pears), we buy most of our fruit at the various Farmers Markets. Fri Dec 01 21:13:04 -0800 2006 2060446 14494 bernalgirl 1 2062913 We are pretty happy with Eatwell. We pickup in the inner sunset. We do pretty well with our box once a week. We sometimes get backed up and will skip a box every six weeks. Fri Dec 01 22:44:26 -0800 2006 2060446 43425 Sebby 1 2929382 FYI, I tried Eatwell for a month in August 2007 and the quality was consistently poor. I think they save their best produce for the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market, and they send food to their CSA that most farms won't let out the door. Tomatoes and potatoes arrived that would mould within a few days; vegetables arrived with bad insect damage (see attached). I have tried many CSAs around the country and this has been the poorest quality I have yet seen. Could just be a bad year -- but buyer beware. Mon Sep 10 22:09:50 -0700 2007 2060446 126369 bayfoodie12 2 2931085 We subscribed to Eatwell for nearly a year, and I think their produce quality slipped considerably; we've now quit. The eggs they sell to Rainbow Grocery now are all brown as compared to the variety of colors from their Araucana hens that they used to have, and the yolks were a pale yellow in the most recent batch. Flavor seems to have suffered too, but that could just be compounding psychological effects. The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back for us was a box containing plums and tomatoes, neither of which were ripe. The plums were so hard that they sat on the counter for weeks, and never softened--only shriveled. This was at the same time I started shopping at Andy's Orchard down in Morgan Hill for stone fruit, tomatoes, and beautiful Romesco Squash, and the comparison on the stone fruit and tomatoes did not do Eatwell any favors. Our impression was also that the CSA subscribers were getting worse produce than they brought to the ferry plaza, and less interesting produce (we'd see good tomatoes or peppers at the ferry plaza on weeks when they weren't in our boxes). I know they're just a small family trying to make a go of it, but statements like this, "I have always said that we dare to pick our fruit ripe so that it tastes great. There is always the danger that it may get damaged on the way or that we miss some damage as we are packing your box. I have thought about this for a while now and i do not want to pick under ripe fruit." from the blog on eatwell.com just end up seeming completely disingenuous when compared to my first-hand experiences throughout the summer with eatwell. Tue Sep 11 11:41:35 -0700 2007 2929382 17221 SteveG 3 2931874 Sadly, I've had a somewhat similar experience with Terra Firma. I always get great tomatoes, but the stone fruit is always damaged, and despite the fact that I've received corn in almost every weekly box, I've yet to eat it even once: every week it's either moldy or full of worms. I've been going to Alemany Market every week for another project I'm working on, and just decided to cancel the CSA subscription and pick up most of my produce there, supplemented by some materials from Bi-Rite. Tue Sep 11 14:31:50 -0700 2007 2931085 19097 pane 4 3132526 This was exactly my experience with Terra Firma, I felt like we got what they couldn't sell elsewhere. I am hoping that won't be the case with Eatwell. I will say the quality with Two Small Farms was always very high, although we got bored with the peak-of-summer produce mix. Fri Nov 16 16:19:40 -0800 2007 2931874 14494 bernalgirl 1 3130047 I just wanted to throw in an update for the CSA threads, which I found very helpful when I was choosing which one to subscribe to in October (2007). I ended up going with Eatwell Farm (link in post above), mainly because I really wanted cruelty-free eggs, and Eatwell delivers those along with the produce. I have been very, very satisfied so far, although I am aware that we haven't entered the dicey season of tomatoes and stone fruit, where not having the option to select our own produce can be very frustrating if it's not done well on our behalf. I'm keeping a record of my CSA experience, cataloging what and how much comes in each box as well as some notes and pictures on what I do with the things that arrive. If you want to see a record of the Eatwell CSA box, especially in terms of variety and quantities, you're welcome to have a look at http://inmybox.wordpress.com/. If you just want to get an idea of what comes in each box, you can skip my cooking notes and amateur food photography and head straight for the "Box Contents" entries at http://inmybox.wordpress.com/category/box-contents/. Fri Nov 16 01:08:30 -0800 2007 2060446 72149 Mariposa 2 4166531 I'm getting the Capay box, every two weeks at the moment—went with them mainly because the other options in my neighbourhood were all fully subscribed. And blogging about it when I get the chance here http://meandmybox.blogspot.com/ Tue Nov 11 22:48:10 -0800 2008 3130047 239342 Ciaran