Reviewing Enright Ridge CSA Saturday Morning Pickup Protocol

We’ve gotten off to a good start with the 2012 season at the Enright Ridge CSA, but we continue to get questions about pickup hours and how to pick up shares late. It seemed like a good idea to clarify how the pickup works a little more.

Pickup hours are from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon. There are people here earlier than 10:00 am, but they are very busy cleaning, sorting, counting, and weighing the produce so it is ready to be divided up among share holders each Saturday morning. If you get to the greenhouse a little early, please wait until 10 o’clock—or when the packout crew says it’s okay to start getting your share.

There are always people to assist you if you have questions about the share for the week. We also try to label each basket with the name of the produce and how much each share should take. The list that is published in the weekly newsletter represents our best guess at what will be in the share, since we finish putting that together a day or so before harvest, and things can change.

We ask that everyone finish picking up their shares by 12 noon so the packout team can clean up the greenhouse and head home to enjoy the rest of their Saturday. It takes a lot longer to clean up if people keep wandering in late to gather their shares, and we really have to control access to the greenhouse from 12:00 noon to about 12:30, so that it is just the packout crew in there then, putting away the leftovers, mopping the floors, and cleaning the tables. Therefore we ask that if you think there is any chance you won’t make it to the greenhouse by about 11:45 so that you can have your share packed up by 12 o’clock, please, please, please let packout know by 8:00 pm the evening before (packout@enright-csa.org).

If you do this and then things change and you can get to the greenhouse earlier, that’s fine . . . we have no problem with that at all. If the packout team has already packed up your share, you can just pick it up and be on your way; if they have not, you can collect your share yourself. It’s much easier for us to deal with folks who ask for their share to be packed up and then turn up early than it is when someone doesn’t let us know to pack up their share and then turns up late.

One other thing—if you share a share with someone, please designate one of the shareholders to pick up the entire share, and then you can divide it among yourselves. Or, you are welcome to all come to the greenhouse together on Saturday morning and work out the division there. What we can’t have is several people coming to get their share of a share separately; it’s pretty much impossible to divide four items between three people fairly, for example, so please don’t ask the packout team to play Solomon and cut that poor head of lettuce down the middle.

Finally, if you have any questions or comments on the packout procedures and protocol, please leave a comment at the bottom of this entry. Thank you very much for your cooperation.