Season End Review of a CSA....

Well, the end of the growing season is ending soon. we’ll see how the rest of the CSA does in the fall boxes. the CSA we tried out this year was Rise and Shine Farms in Fallon, NV. how to put this diplomatically. They are by far worse than the self righteous hippies that populate Berkeley. I haven’t even gotten to their “produce” yet. I believe that they treat thier subscribers like crap. Why? Because we were the second causality of ”sharing”. When we gave feedback to Great Basin Basket, we never got the treatment we got from Rise and Shine. We’ve been members of various CSAs from California to Nevada for the PAST TEN YEARS. I’d like to say that we have an idea of the concept of CSAs.

This started with a water issue that they had at the beginning of the season. They had a visit from the water district authority. the water authority found that they were in violation of home water use regulations and was ready to shut them down. Rise and Shine put out a call to their subscribers to “rise up and fight the man”. i never “rise up and fight the man”, unless i have proof that they are screwing the little guy over WITHIN the confines of regulation. i had a suspicion that the farm did not have the proper water permits so i did a little digging....the farm had NO PERMITS to water farmland beyond sustenance farming. so, in other words, one can use the water from one’s home well to water crops that one uses to feed oneself and family. but Rise and Shine is a CSA, there is money exchange. One non-subscriber asked the question of refund in the event of not being able to water the crops and got some run around. they posted a negative review of the farm on the google place page for their poor treatment by the farm. the farm responded by “sharing” this information with its members. the response from the most vocal of the members were those poo-pooing the reviewer and calling them “lame-os” for not supporting the farm.

does this sound familiar? does this sound like the political rhetoric that is going around right now? does this sound like tea baggers? i’ll leave that up in the air for now.

now the it’s our turn.

We sent an email letting them know that even though this was a hard year for a lot of farmers, we were disappointed at their baskets. we would get a dozen eggs and five sad looking produce. now for the produce/egg share alone, it’s roughly 25$/week. 5$ per item is just way too much. i can go to whole paycheck and get a bunch of produce for 25$. we didn’t even get into the fact that their produce suck! safeway does a better job at the quality of the produce they truck in. This was their email to the subscribers....

really? i’ve used public humiliation as a teaching tool when i taught martial arts. but come on....nobody can have an opinion other than “You’re doing great!”?

here’s what the sheep said....on FB...really? how blind are you people?

I may not agree with the farm’s philosophy on food, but i will never treat people like this. spray their honest opinion as a humiliation tactic and then solicit the followers for sympathy. Bad business skills.

But then again, i guess that if one has never known food, other than the local safeway, then they’ll never know what real food is. we are not “naysayers”, we just present the truth.

Rise and Shine....you want respect?  you have to earn it.  you are not entitled to it.  so, don't frack with me.  i will spray and i will spray more......


  i will support a nevada farmer, just not this one.