CSA vs. Seasonal Produce Box: Which is Right for You?

Our CSA begins the first week of June and ends in mid October.  You can choose to pick up weekly or bi-weekly, on schedule A (beginning June 3rd) or B (beginning June 10th).

CSA pick up is on Tuesday between 3pm and 6pm for both our South Hill and Casa Cano Farms Drop Points.  If you pick up on the farm, you do have more flexibilty for pick up because we are able to leave CSA’s in the cooler for the remainder of the week, and you can pick it up during any of our open hours (Tuesday – Friday, 9am – 5pm).

The Seasonal Produce Box is also available weekly or bi-weekly, but is available year round, and begins the Thursday after you sign up.  You can pick up on the farm or have your box delivered to your home or work.

Our CSA is a well rounded diversity of produce each week that changes through the season, and is not customizeable.

The Seasonal Produce Box is a set selection of produce basics each week that cannot be customized, but leaves room to shop on our website to add to your box each week.  

In general, there is a salad green, rotating roots, microgreens or shoots, a large leafy green like kale or chard, cabbage, broccoli, or cauliflower, seasonal warm season crops like cucumbers, summer squash, tomatoes, and peppers, an herb, garlic and onions in late summer and fall, and a “fun” lesser known veggie, along with occasional fruit. 

There are 8-12 items in each CSA share.  

There are 4-6 items in each box.  

We’re considering this our “basics” box, and in general, there is a salad green, a root, and seasonal specialties like tomatoes, squash, and asparagus.  

We have a recipe section on our website with past season recipes and new recipes posted.  

As a CSA member and a Seasonal Produce Box subsciber, you will be subscribed to our weekly email that will have a recipe relevant to the week’s share/box.  

Yes!  We’re excited to offer more flexibility with our CSA this year, and full flexibility with our new Seasonal Produce Boxes.

If you are a CSA Member, you can skip one CSA share, and recieve a credit of one Seasonal Produce Box that you can redeem at any time (if you want extra veggies one week during your CSA, or you can wait until after the CSA ends in October.)  We always recommend trying to be available or have a friend/family member pick up for you if you are not able to.  After this one skip, we are not able to credit any missed CSA shares.  

As a Seasonal Produce Box subscriber, you can pause and resume your subscription as needed.  

Our farm, Casa Cano Farms, is owned and operated by wife/husband team Madyson Versteeg and Jorge Cano.  We currently have 3 team members who work with us — Alex, Roberto, and Anahi.  We work as a team to grow, harvest, wash, and pack your produce each week!

We also work with other local farms that we’re friends with and that we trust to grow sustainable, organic, and nutritious food.

Here are some of the farms we work with during the heart of our growing season:

• Dog Wild Farm – Spokane, WA
• Vets on the Farm – Spokane, WA
• Hirschel Heritage Farm – Latah, WA
• OPMA (coop of Organic family farms) – Okanogan, WA
• Fresh Cut Farm
• New Heritage Farms
• Snapdragon Flower Farm
• Wild Sage Farms
• and more!

Here are some of the farms we work with during the late fall/winter/early spring season:

• Ronnigers Organics – Moyie Springs, ID
• Red Wheelbarrow Produce – Sandpoint, ID
• Killarney Farm – CDA, ID
• Puget Sound Food Hub – Coop of organic farms in Western WA.

We don’t currently have a hard definition of what local is, but we are determined to work with farms that we believe in and trust, ideally as close to our Spokane neighborhood as possible.  We love working with Hirschel Heritage Farm in Latah, WA , who grows the sweetest carrots and beets, with Vets on the Farm just down the Palouse Highway from us, Snapdragon Flower Farm for bouquets, Dog Wild Farm, Fresh Cut Farm, and Wild Sage Farms, and more, all within in the immediate Spokane area.  With that said, we also love working with regional farm friends, like OPMA in Okanogan – a coop of Organic Family farms that grow amazing fruit – Killarney Farm in CDA, ID, Red Wheelbarrow Produce in Sandpoint, ID, and Ronnigers Organics in Bonner, ID.  We’ve grown a connection with Organic farms on the west side of the state through the Puget Sound Food Hub, a farmer owned co op that we can get veggies from, along with other WA grown and made products, especially in the winter months when it’s more difficult to grow veggies on the East side of the state. 

We believe that supporting small farms and businesses in your community creates a stronger, more resilient community.  While the convenience of box store shopping is alluring, we implore you to slow down and eat real, local, food that hasn’t been and wasn’t meant to be in transit for days.  Food grown on small organic  farms have more flavor, more nutrients, and more diversity than the huge Organic farms that are grocery store staples. Connect with your farm and farmers, learn about what you eat and how it’s grown, and live the healthiest life you can.  We are what we eat (and what we eat ate). 

While we are not certified Organic, we grow to and beyond the Organic standards.

For fertilizers, we use OMRI certified fertilizers and our own farm-made compost for compost tea and spread on the soil.

For pest protection, we use row covers to exclude insect pests like aphids and cabbage moths, and rely on healthy plants to withstand pest pressure when present.  We also have planted and continue to plant flowering hedgerows to attract, feed, and protect pest predators like syrphid flies, parasitic wasps, ladybugs, and various birds.

For weed control we hand weed and use hand tools in the garden, as well as use landscape fabric and tarps to control weeds.

We are a no-till farm, which means we do not rototill or plow our soil, which results in a more diverse soil ecosystem, and healthier, tastier produce.  Our goal is to grow nutrient dense and delicious produce while caring for our farm ecosystem, and with consideration to our larger Valleyford, WA, and world ecosystems, from the soil up.

The other farms we work with are either certified Organic, or grow organically, with sustainable methods, wtih the same goals to grow healthy and nutritious food that tastes great.  

You can shop on our website for grass fed beef, pork, chicken, eggs, dairy, organic grocery, honey, and more!

Order by the cut off date for your pick up/delivery date and we’ll send your order with your CSA to your drop point with your name on it, or have it packed with your Seasonal Produce Box.

You can also add on a Fruit, Mushroom, or Meat Essentials subscription for pick up/delivery with your CSA or Seasonal Produce Box.