This is a great club that you can join during the winter months for weekly delivery in the Keys.  Check them out at www.redlandorganics.com  

Big Pine and Key West Pick Up Available

You may have heard about the “veggie co-op” started in Key West last winter. A group of us joined Redland Organics CSA (community supported agriculture),  a farming consortium in Homestead, to receive locally grown organic vegetables each week between November and April.  

It’s time to THINK VEGGIES again and it will be even easier to participate this year!  We have negotiated with the farm so that they will deliver to us this year, which means that we can have unlimited members and we don’t have to worry about the time, expense or traffic concerns of driving to Homestead each week.   

What’s it all about?

·        We buy in to support the farm’s growing season, and we receive weekly “shares” of whatever is being harvested.  This varies depending on the growing season – heavy on greens in the early weeks, and then more variety of tomatoes, squash, peppers, radishes, etc. as the season goes on.

·        It’s all FRESH PICKED, LOCALLY PRODUCED AND ORGANIC!   Supports our local farmers and decreases demands on fossil fuels (think Global Warming) in transporting produce thousands of miles.

·        We pay up front for the full season and in doing so, we share the full bounty, and the risk, with the farm in the event of weather events and/or crop failures.  (Last year even with hurricane Wilma’s destruction, we received a beautiful cornucopia of veggies throughout the season.)

·        You can buy a full share for $580 ($30.50 a week) or a half share for $350 ($18.40 a week).  We can now say from experience that this is a LOT of food!  A full share is adequate for a 2-person + household if you usually eat a lot of veggies!  There is an additional $80 delivery fee ($4 per week, including one make-up week) for having the farm deliver to us in Key West.  From our experience last year, the group consensus was that it is well worth it to pay a little extra and to have the farm deliver to us.  

·        You can sign up directly on the redlandorganics.com  website.  Go to the CSA link and click on the CSA APPLICATION.  There is a lot more information on this website about the philosophy behind CSAs and how the program works.  You can see what you get in a typical week – we were all very pleasantly surprised last year by the quantity and superior quality of this food!

·        A deposit of $150 must be made by September 20th to reserve your share; payment in full must be made by October 31st.

SPREAD THE WORD!  To get delivery to Key West, we need a minimum of 25 people.  If you have questions about how the program works, or why it’s a great thing to do for yourself and the environment, call Jody at 304-2064, or Ashley at 766-6825!