CSA Subscription

Our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares for the 2023-24 season are now open.

Before signing up for a CSA share, please check out the CSA member MOU here to make sure our CSA is a good fit for you.

This season we’re offering a brand new type of CSA membership. Find out more about it below, and then you can sign up here.

PICK-YOUR-OWN (PYO)-CSA

BRAND NEW!!

This year we’re offering you the chance to sign up for a share of fruit in advance and then visit the farm to pick it yourself.

This means you’re paying the same low price for all your fruit, regardless of varieties or market rates! (Casual PYO and farm shop rates will usually range from $7 to $30 per kg.)

The season will probably start in mid-December and go through until April. The orchard will be open on the following days:

• Wednesday and Thursday from 10 am. to 4 pm – PYO-CSA MEMBERS ONLY
• Friday and Sunday from 10 am. to 4 pm – open to the general public

As a PYO-CSA member, you can pick your fruit any Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Sunday, but we recommend members come on members-only days if possible. You can visit as often (or infrequently) as you like, and pick as much or as little as you like on each visit (with some provisos, see “VERY IMPORTANT NOTES” below).

Your fruit will be weighed each time you pick and we’ll let you know when you reach your pre-paid limit. If you want to pick more fruit after that you can either sign up for another PYO-CSA share or pay the higher casual PYO rates.

There are two options: you can sign up for them here.

1. 50kg fruit = Recommended price is $225 (equivalent to $5/kg), but you’re welcome to pay-what-you-want from $212.50 to $300.
2. 100kg fruit = Recommended price is $400 (equivalent to $4 kg), but you’re welcome to pay-what-you-want from $350 to $550.

If you’re interested in trading the value of your PYO-CSA share for labour, education, and fun, please check out how to join the Fruit Crew before you sign up for your share.

Likely Crops for 2023-24 Season

The following table is a summary of fruit types. Within that, there is an interesting range of more than 50 varieties with a huge diversity of flavours, textures, and purposes!

We’ll send a newsletter each week explaining which varieties will be available for PYO that week.

     ~     ~     ~

VERY IMPORTANT NOTES!

1. We may occasionally need to limit the amount of fruit you pick at a time (if we’re short of fruit one week, for example).
2. We may occasionally need to limit the type of fruit you pick at a time (if we’re short of apricots one week, for example).
3. PYO-CSA will include apricots, plums, apples, and pears. This includes more than 50 different varieties spread over the whole season.
4. Due to limited availability, cherries will NOT be available for pick-your-own this year. They will however be available at the Farm Shop and our markets. We hope to offer PYO cherries in coming years (if the trees grow well!).
5. Most of our peach and nectarine trees died in 2022 due to excessive rain, so also will NOT be available for PYO.

We’ll send a weekly newsletter to CSA members alerting you to what’s happening that week. (And you can always contact us on 0409 706 784 if you have a question before you visit.)

A NOTE ABOUT CSA BOXES

This year, we’re not offering the option to pay upfront for boxes of picked fruit for the whole season. We’ve replaced it with a “pay-as-you-go” box option. When boxes are available we’ll send an email with various options, you can pre-purchase a box, and pick it up at the farm or one of the markets.

Alternatively, you can just visit us at the farm shop or market (where you’d be picking up your box anyway) and buy off the table by the kilo.

There are two reasons we are not offering a CSA box:

1. We lost most of our peach and nectarine trees due to wet weather in 2022. This has added a degree of unreliability and unpredictability to the season that might make it hard to supply a nice mixed fruit box each week. We would find this very stressful!
2. While CSA boxes are very popular, we also got feedback about quantities being too large, too small, etc. So this year we’ll trial letting you choose each week from the fruit that’s available – a bit more admin for everyone, but hopefully less stress all around!

To make sure you hear about fruit boxes, please sign up for our mailing list.