Join our CSA!  A vegetable CSA subscription from Kookoolan Farms offers you:

•       Fresh, 100% organically grown, local vegetables, harvested 6 to 36 hours before your pickup.

•       50% or more savings, compared to retail organic vegetable prices

•       Better-tasting heirloom varieties rarely found in grocery stores

•       A connection with your farm, with your community, and with where your food comes from.

•       Weekly share newsletter, CSA cookbook, and farm classes

•       Add-ons of meat, eggs, and more

•       Convenient pickup locations (at our farmstore in Yamhill; through buying clubs with pickup locations throughout Portland; or at the Intel Ronler Acres RA1 café in Hillsboro – available to Intel blue-badge employees and green-badge contractors only)

WHAT IS CSA?

            CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, is also known as “vegetable box” or “subscription Agriculture.”  Like a magazine subscription, you receive your purchase in weekly installments. 

            Conventional vegetable farmers specialize in a few mainstream crops under contracts with the commodity market, grocery distributors, and perhaps restaurants. We grow a diversity of heirloom produce under contract with individual families.

            By paying at the beginning of the season, you receive premium, 100% organically-grown vegetables at more than 50% off retail or farmer’s market prices – overall, about $2 per pound or less for a full season of premium organically grown vegetables, herbs, and fruits. Your savings account may be earning only 1% APR.  Instead, put it to work with Kookoolan Farms CSA and earn 100% APR paid in fresh, 100% organically-grown vegetables!

The vegetable fields at Kookoolan Farms, summer 2009

WHAT YOU GET WITH YOUR CSA

•          Weekly fresh, 100% organically grown vegetables at significant savings

•          “From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce,” 3rd ed, 228 pages.  In Farmer Chrissie’s view, this is the finest recipe book available for CSA subscribers.  Our free gift to you with your paid subscription.        

•          Weekly newsletter with share contents and recipes

•          Your children will eat more vegetables.  Children whose families subscribe to CSA eat more fruits and vegetables and enjoy them more, compared to families not in a CSA.

•          First notification for chicken, beef, lamb, pork, turkey, mead, wine club, cheese making and other classes, and other new or special offerings

•          The (optional) opportunity to participate in farming.

•          A conscious connection between your nearby farmers and you -- the people who eat the food. 

WHAT YOU SUPPORT WITH CSA

•          Heirloom variety crops and livestock breeds, whose preservation is so important for biodiversity in the world’s food supply.

•          Sustainable farming practices and fair wages.

•          Food security – your guaranteed share of your farm’s harvest, independent of petroleum prices, politics, and world events.

Salad 100% grown and harvested at Kookoolan Farms.  Many people are familiar with the profound difference between shipped, out-of-season tomatoes, and fresh-from-the-vine heirloom tomatoes.  Be prepared to experience that same kind of difference in discovering fresh, local, heirloom-variety lettuces, carrots, peppers, and more!

MEET YOUR FARMERS

            Married partners Chrissie and Koorosh Zaerpoor are in our fifth year of farming.  We are engineers by professional trade, physicists by academic training, and meadmaker and cabinetmaker, respectively, by avocation.

            In building the business of Kookoolan Farms, we are committed to creating an economically and biologically diverse and self-sustaining farm, on which heirloom-variety fruits, vegetables, and livestock breeds thrive, in a humane, natural, and healthy cycle of interdepen-dence, shared and enjoyed by its farmers, workers, neighbors, and customers.

            We strive to build our farm’s fertility rather than buy it, by composting and recycling natural farm waste and by-products.  We buy locally, sell locally, contribute locally, and hire locally.

            Our goal is to produce the highest-quality, most nutrient-dense, organically and pasture-raised foods, and to provide our customers with classes and connections to maximize their value and enjoyment of these foods.

            Our animals are always humanely and respectfully handled from their first day to their last, free-ranged, pasture-fed, and hormone- and antibiotic-free.

We strive for integrity and craftsmanship in everything we produce.  Thank you for your trust in us for the important work of nourishing your family.

HOW MUCH FOOD IS IN A SHARE?

A full size share averages 20 lbs of vegetables each week of the season, or about 400 pounds total over 17 weeks.  We endeavor to provide 1 lb. of salad greens, 1.5 lbs. of carrots, 1 lb. of onions (type varies seasonally), and 0.5 to 1 lb. of fresh herbs nearly every week of your subscription period, generally providing 10-15 different crops each week.  20 lbs. a week is about three pounds a day; after trimming, more than two pounds a day, or a half-pound per day per person for a household of four.  Our shares are sized for you to enjoy fresh vegetables every week of the season, plus to be able to put up some vegetables for winter consumption (and we provide instructions!)

This was a typical week’s full-size share in August 2009.

HOW WE FARM

            Kookoolan Farms produces 100% organically grown vegetables and fruits, following traditional practices of rotational planting and grazing, companion planting, cover crops, and many principles of biodynamics. 

            Nearly unique among organic CSA vegetable farms, our composted manures are entirely produced on our own farm by the animals we husband for milk, meat and eggs.  Kookoolan Farms does not purchase manure or compost from Confinement Animal Feedlot Operations (CAFOs).

            We follow integrated pest management protocols, relying on row covers and beneficial predators such as chickens and ladybugs to control insects.  Our fungicide is a foliar spray  of whey from our own dairy cows.  Herbicide of pastures, orchard, fenceline, and vegetable gardens is entirely mechanical and never chemical:  we cut, till, hand-pull, and use chickens for weed control.

            One-third of our acreage is voluntarily conserved in a wild riparian woodlot for wildlife habitat, migratory birds, and carbon capture.

            Nutrient-rich water from our milking parlor and on-farm licensed poultry slaughterhouse is captured and recycled to nourish orchard and perimeter trees.

HOW IT WORKS

•         You pay $799 for a full-size, full-season share (only $699 if paid in full by February 28!)

•         Each week during your season, you pick up your box of fresh, 100% organically-grown vegetables!

•         Pickup at our farm in Yamhill -- either singly or through buying clubs in neighborhoods throughout the metropolitan area (ask us for matchmaking!)

•         Pickup at the RA1 Café office on the Intel Ronler Acres campus in Hillsboro (available to Intel blue-badge employees and green-badge contractors only)

Our harvest plan and crop guide