By Chris Aldridge
Kentucky Ag News

Kentucky Proud’s online promotion to connect consumers with farmers selling subscriptions to their locally grown, season food is in its fifth year. This community supported agriculture (CSA) event, aptly named CSA Week, began a year after Old Homeplace Farm in Clay County started offering the subscription-based model of buying local produce.

Maggie Bowling, who runs Old Homeplace Farm near Oneida along with her husband, Will, said she has “definitely” detected an increase in CSA interest this year.

“I think it's getting ramped up as people are paying attention,” Maggie said. “I saved a lot of my (online) promotional pushes until this week. I have a big email marketing campaign running and have been talking a lot more about purchasing CSA (shares) on my social media. It's fun to participate with all the other farms.”

A record 74 Kentucky CSAs are participating in CSA Week, which is March 4-8 this year.

“I definitely have seen that my current CSA members and past CSA members … have been sharing a lot of content about our farm on their own Facebook and Instagrams,” Maggie said. “They've also been telling people in person who they think might be interested (in CSAs). I recruited some of my current CSA members to tell people this week, and that seems to have really been working.”

Old Homeplace Farm currently has 75 members buying shares of its vegetable and flower CSAs. As a special promotion during CSA Week, Maggie is offering customers signing up for Old Homeplace Farm’s CSA a gift card to use at businesses where they pick up their weekly shares of the farm’s harvest in Corbin, London, Manchester, Oneida, Hyden, and Hazard.

“We’re primarily a vegetable CSA,” said Maggie, who grows two acres of veggies. “We grow a lot of greens. That is one of the things that sets us apart in our area -- lettuce and fresh greens.

“We also offer a weekly or monthly cut flower share. We've raised cut flowers ever since we started raising vegetables in 2014.

‘We actually started out doing a meat CSA,” she added, noting it started in 2012. “But right now, we're selling meat a la carte in individual packs through our online store. We had a little less production last year, and we were worried about being able to supply a meat CSA this year.”

Maggie said the meat CSA, which includes pork, will resume this summer.

“My in-laws and my husband do almost all of the livestock work on the farm, and I do the vegetables,” Maggie said. “They had been raising and selling meat (since 2010) and doing the meat CSA before I joined the farm. In 2014, we added vegetables because of my background.”

Maggie grew up on a vegetable farm in Clarksville, Ohio. That Guy’s Family Farm sells organic produce and cut flowers.

“My parents sold at lots of farmers’ markets and to some high-end grocery stores,” Maggie remembered. “Now my parents actually run a CSA and do a lot of sales that way. They experienced a customer shift into wanting more of a subscription model.”

Maggie said she was surprised when Old Homestead Farm experienced the same shift in 2018.

“A lot of our really consistent and good customers … did not want to have to get on the online store and order every week,” she explained. “They just wanted vegetables to show up.

“I was really blown away by that! People were asking for less choice, but it was more convenient for them. They trusted us and wanted our vegetables, but they didn't want to have to remember to make an order every week. I was like, ‘Well, they're describing a CSA.’ Now CSA is our main (sales) outlet.”

Old Homestead Farm raises most everything it sells except local honey and maple syrup. A neighboring beekeeper that sells the honey maintains 15 of his 60 hives on the Bowlings’ farm.

Other Kentucky CSAs offer unique items. GreeneLanding KY farm in Fayette County sells herbal shares. You can share in the milk production at Hatmaker Homestead in Bourbon County. Triple J Farm in Scott County offers egg shares and the option to add bakery items.

“It (CSA) takes a big commitment from the farm and a big commitment from the customer, but it really does help us be more resilient as a farm knowing that we have a commitment from all of our CSA members,” Maggie said. “So, it's been really wonderful since we made the switch.”