Jessie's Cosmic Garden: 'Top Picks' CSA
Market Boxes and Gourmet Groceries
for the Gastronomically Sophisticated Locavore!
Home Delivered—All Local Food —Online Ordering
'Top Picks' CSA has been established to bring the very best local, pesticide-free, organically-grown produce to your doorsteps once a week. Home delivery is not mandatory — pickups can always be arranged. In addition, we source local food producers who take exceptional care with the products they offer for sale. Most of your local shopping can be done online, while letting us shop for you and bring it to your door. We have visited most of the farms and food production companies, know the farmers, bakers, etc and we have a lot of experience growing, processing and eating local food.
We are a unique type of CSA, a hybrid market box/add-on service that is part of Jessie's Cosmic Garden, in Mount Shasta. However we reach out to procure the very best, the 'Top Picks', of our region, which, mileage-wise and heart-wise, includes the Rogue Valley region of Southern Oregon (GMO-free) ranchers in Siskiyou County and weather-permitting weekly Winter Market trips to Phoenix.
What is a CSA? It is Community-Supported Agriculture, wherein the farmer is paid ahead by community members to grow food for the members. These supporters are typically called subscribers. If the farmer has a lean year the CSA supports him/her regardless, and when the year is bountiful beyond imagining, the veggie boxes are overflowing. Our CSA will be a bit different, less risky, since we are not the only farmer, but represent many farms, and we have access to farms that are proven reliable producers, some of them year-round. For a lot of reasons, it makes sense to support food grown in our region and eating seasonally.
Our hybrid CSA is not just about veggies and fruit, though produce is at the heart of the project. We propose to procure local food for you, including the best, freshest veggies, most cold-hardy fruit, Old-style Artisan breads and pastries, pastured eggs, Gluten-free bread, and in-season farm-made jams, fresh and frozen berries, savory and sweet pies,, grass-fed beef, pork, lamb, buffalo, chicken, and fresh-frozen ocean seafood and deliver it all to your doorstep or a nearby drop site. If not in the Mt. Shasta area, you can pickup at our farm.
We want to start small and stay exclusive with the best food and service around. That means we personally shop the markets and farms for you, giving you options aplenty, and make sure you get the best local produce within 24 hours of picking. All the veggies will be organic (certified or non-certified) and some will be biodynamically grown (not Demeter certified). If we do, on occasion, have conventionally grown fruit or veggies or one of our vendors uses non-organic main ingredients, we will post that on the market page and/or vendor page. For example, Coquette Bakery doesn't use organic flour but it is very high quality flour from our region. We supplement seasonally at the Coops or high-end supermarkets.
How does it work? Read all of our web pages to get the whole picture of 'Top Picks' CSA but in a nutshell, you will subscribe (prepay for a season) to a market box by value. Our Online Marketplace is open from Friday at 6am until Sunday at 6pm). Each weekly cycle begins when you receive our weekly newsletter with updates from our farmers and important notices from the CSA. When you use up your subscription, you subscribe again on your own cycle of "seasons".
On the Online Market page, you will find the available veggies, fruits and additional local products offered for the coming week. If an item or vendor is unavailable the item or vendor name will have an X in front of it. All members shop the Online Market during that open window. The value of your box can be spent however and whenever you want over the weeks of the season. You can also do emergency deposits to your Personal Member Account (PMA), which you can initiate on the subscribe page to top up as needed before re-subscribing.
On Sunday evening or Monday morning, you receive a copy of your order to review and correct, if necessary. We place orders with some farmers/producers on Sunday evening or very early Mondays for them to harvest on Monday for our member's boxes, then we pick up the produce/groceries on Tuesday mornings. You will receive or pick up your local food on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday, you will receive a statement of your account with your new credit balance and a revised order if it had changed. Taking a vacation doesn't result in a loss and we understand some members need to take whole seasons off.
You will become a member when you sign up for a market box(es). That is when our contract begins and you pay-it-forward for the upcoming season (the essence of CSA). A small additional fee when you first sign up will be used to hand-build your sturdy wooden delivery boxes (one to stay with you and one for us to pick up empty with each delivery). If you leave the CSA we'll buy them back from you at a used price, depending on condition.
Our extraordinary program for Tuesday deliveries in theWinter and occasional Saturday deliveries (both barring blizzards) gives you access to fresh lettuce, micogreens, and other fresh greens, standard stored root crops, asian greens, aged cheese (goat and cow) all of the meats and seafood, eggs and most of our non-farm producers 12 months of the year (with a few long breaks for winter weather and unrelated work). At Jessie's Cosmic Garden we are gearing up for winter produce from the unheated greenhouse, so the sturdy brassicas, spinach, cilantro, carrots for sure. There are no markets the two weeks around Christmas and New Years.
You will always have cash, check and paypal options (those qualified can arrange no interest payments using their paypal accounts but we need to cover their service charges with your payment unless you can use 'send money to friends and family' from a personal account). Use the menu at the top and bottom of each page to thoroughly explore the options, to sign up, pay membership and place your first order. As long as spaces are available and you are in the region or willing to pickup, you can sign up and start ordering. It may be that we you'll be put on a wait list. Bookmark this page as your CSA home page and bookmark the Online Market to quickly get to your order page.
We are constantly resourcing, adding new vendors, producers and products to our Online Marketplace. What our subscribers want, really matters.
Cheers!
Jessie's Cosmic Garden
Stumped? Email: TopPicksCSA@heartofthesun.com
Follow us on facebook: Jessie's Cosmic Garden