Essex on Lake Champlain

Essex, New York Community Blog Since 2011

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CSAs in Essex, NY

In recent years, Essex, NY has emerged as a nationally recognized leader in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). CSAs in Essex have attracted media attention, have been celebrated in best selling memoir The Dirty Life, and have nurtured local food support among Adirondack Coast residents, visitors and restaurants. CSAs in Essex represent the most recent wave in the Champlain Valley’s agricultural heritage, a tradition that until recently was rapidly vanishing. As farmers shift from conventional monoculture to diversified, community funded, locally consumed agriculture, the future of CSAs in Essex – and across the Unitd States – looks bright.

Potatoes and onions at one of the CSAs in Essex (Credit: virtualDavis)
Potatoes and onions at one of the CSAs in Essex (Credit: virtualDavis)

For over 25 years, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has become a popular way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer.

Here are the basics: a farmer offers a certain number of “shares” to the public… Interested consumers purchase a share (aka a “membership” or a “subscription”) and in return receive a box (bag, basket) of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season.

This arrangement creates several rewards for both the farmer and the consumer. Learn more here… (Local Harvest)

Produce and products vary from farm to farm and may include not vegetables, fruits, meats, eggs, dairy, flowers, grains (and dry beans, etc.), farm-produced goods (such as sauerkraut, soap, maple syrup, etc.); and other items. Sometimes local farms partner to diversify their particular CSA offering.

Consumers (or members) of CSAs in Essex can witness the farming process as they stop by their farm source to pick up weekly produce and some farms even ask or allow share members to help out on the farm (especially during big jobs or emergencies). This adds an important element back into the human-land connection that is lost when people do not realize where their food comes from or the work it takes to create it.

CSAs in Essex and Beyond

CSAs in Essex and neighboring communities are a relatively new trend despite a long-standing agricultural presence in the Champlain Valley. Essex Farm pioneered the CSA movement locally when they opened in 2004.

  • Essex Farm: Mark and Kristin Kimball founded Essex Farm together in 2004, which is the world’s first full-diet CSA, as far as they know. Essex Farm offers a year-round, full diet, free choice membership. According to their website they currently farm 600 acres and feed 222 members, while powered by fifteen solar panels, nine draft horses, ten full-time farmers, and three tractors. They produce grass-fed beef, pastured pork, chicken, eggs, fifty different kinds of vegetables, milk, grains and flour, fruit, herbs, maple syrup, and soap…
  • Full and By Farm: Sara Kurak and James Graves operate the Full and By Farm CSA in Essex, NY, with assistance from temporary farm hands and interns. Nestled between the Boquet River and Boquet Mountain, Full and By Farm was historically a holstein dairy, now reborn as a diversified vegetable and livestock farm. Combining ancient, proven cultivation techniques with the latest innovations in sustainable growing methods and resource conservation, Full and By is rejuvenating a local landmark while generating sustenance for the community. They produce a variety of vegetables, strawberries, grass-fed beef, chicken, pasture pork, eggs…
  • Other CSAs The success and popularity of Essex CSAs has spawned several newer CSAs in the region. We will include a link to nearby CSAs soon…

Are there any local CSAs that we are missing? Please let us know in the comments!

Essex CSA Archive

The following posts on the blog featured or mentioned Essex area CSAs since June 2011.