Dear CSA members,

Happy Fall! This time of year, while the land keeps providing delicious and bountiful food, we are also turning our attention toward next season. We’re excited to announce that we just updated the website with Season 2022 CSA registration - and of course, current members you have first dibs on all shares!

Just head over here for all the details and to reserve your spot. Be sure to read some updates below, too!

First though - we want to thank each of you for supporting our farm this year. For trusting us to grow food for you and your loved ones. For showing up in community. For eating veggies (!!) – and all the time it takes to cook and prepare them deliciously. Being your farmers continues to humble and energize us, and we don’t take that for granted, ever.

We hope you’ll be back with us in 2022 – and if you know you want in, please go ahead and reserve your spot today!

Early registrations are a huge support to our farm, allowing us to purchase seeds, equipment and supplies for next season and carry us through the Winter months. It’s also the best way to guarantee your spot … for the past couple years we have been selling out earlier and earlier, and we really want to avoid that happening before you have a chance to register.

You can always hold your spot with a small deposit - and please reach out to make a plan if early payment is a barrier. For solidarity share members - there is an updated application for you to fill out, and we’ll be in touch to confirm your spot as soon as possible, once we secure our funding for the season (returning members will have priority).

To thank you for signing up early, anyone who registers by October 15th will receive a special gift for Winter! This year we’re making you a nourishing tea blend we’re calling “Harvest Walk” - a sampling of the medicinal herbs that accompany us daily on the farm. We’ll send it along with the final CSA share at the end of October, and hope that it provides a little Rock Steady goodness while the fields rest until Spring.

As we open the doors to our 7th season, we really do have a lot to celebrate. A healthy, hilarious and incredibly loving team of highly skilled farmers is at the top of the list. The opportunity to live out more and more of our mission, through our apprenticeship program and other educational offerings. The gorgeous and generous land we steward. And YOU! Thank you for being such an important part of it all.

Updates for the 2022 season!

• We’re extending the season TWO WEEKS! 2022’s CSA will be 22 Weeks long, hooray! Next year, we are not planning on taking a week off as we’ve done the past couple seasons, and we’ll either start a week earlier than usual or run an extra week into early November (depending on seasonal conditions). Please note pricing on everything is obviously higher than last year, due to these two additional weeks of food. Remember, we offer flexible payment plans - and especially if you sign up early we can break it up into many smaller installments over the next year.

• Pick up times & locations. The shift this year to combining our midweek Manhattan & BK drops into one day was overall really supportive and smooth! However, those 11+ hour drives are no joke. We’ve made the tough decision to streamline a bit, so next year there will be no pick up at CL Brooklyn on Flatbush Ave or at Grey Dog on Carmine St. We hope those of you picking up at those sites will be able to shift to another nearby location, and apologize for any inconvenience. We’re also working on securing a Weds Bushwick location that has some capacity to staff the pick up internally, but we’ll find something close to Starr Bar. Massive thank you to all our host sites! Exact pick up times are still in the works – we’ll continue to gather your feedback on this – but the rest of the locations should remain the same.

• Fruit share changes to come! We’re exploring a new partnership with a local farm/orchard for next year’s fruit share. While we work out all the details, the fruit share is not yet available on the site - but you can always add it on later and we’ll be in touch as soon as the details are ready for sign ups.

• Go FULL! We’ve renamed the “half share” to be “small share”, to avoid confusion since it’s actually about ⅔ the size of the full share. Heads up that these smaller shares are more limited in availability, and if you’re on the fence about which size share you want for next season, we hope you’ll go for the full! It will be the best value, with the most variety, and we’re working on some resources for folks who are looking for additional tips to make the most of your share and use up extra veggies in creative quick ways. Plus, you can always share with a neighbor or friend!

• Remember to keep an eye out for the end of season survey via email where you can help us create next year’s crop plan and offer any feedback you have on the CSA. We’ve made some of these initial updates as part of opening registration, but the specific seed orders and planting map will be hashed out in the Winter months, so there’s still plenty of time to offer your thoughts.

P.S. Are you getting the weekly emails? A few folks have let us know that the member newsletters have been getting stuck in the spam folder, boo! If you haven’t been getting regular emails from us, please check your spam/junk folder and add hello (at) rocksteadyfarm.com to your contacts list. Send us a note if you need help troubleshooting!