CSA is so much more than just a weekly supply of food
Here are some of the key benefits
.
Affordable
​We want you to get good value for money each week. In fact, we estimate that you will save an average of 25% off your fresh produce bill! Plus, when the harvest is abundant we will be delighted to share this with you, meaning you share in our successes and reap the rewards at no extra cost.
Top quality
We deliver high quality fresh food using sustainable and organic methods for people who join in this commitment with us. It’s like hiring your own private gardener to grow the best possible food for you!
Partnership
CSA is a food initiative where the community shares the risks and rewards of producing food in a spirit of mutual trust and openness. This includes support through both good and poor harvests. In the spirit of building resilient food systems, we will be planting a versatile range of crops to mitigate the effects of drought, heat, heavy rain, pests etc. That being said, farming can be unpredictable and there may be times when a certain crop doesn’t do as well as we’d hoped. Whatever happens we will always aim to make up for it elsewhere and always keep you informed. Nature is pretty clever - often when conditions are unfavourable for some crops, others thrive.
Environment
You are supporting a method of farming that is regenerative, not destructive. Conventional agriculture is environmentally damaging and unsustainable. We restore the soil using natural methods. We also raise our own seedlings and use only untreated Australian seed (saved from our gardens wherever we can).
Health
Food is medicine so we want all the food we grow for you and your family to be jam packed with nutrients. Fresh food that has been transported large distances is no longer fresh. That means all the vitamins and minerals we thought we were eating have disappeared. We harvest most things within 24 hours of collection (usually that same morning), so you can be guaranteed that you are getting the freshest, healthiest food possible.
Taking the power back
CSA is a proactive response to concerns around resilience and transparency in the current food system. It can counter the negative effects of industrial agriculture by reconnecting people with fresh local food produced using ecological farming methods. This is part of a wider international movement of food sovereignty. It enables you to take back control over the way food is grown, processed and traded so that you get affordable fresh, healthy, local food with a deeper connection to eating in harmony with the seasons and knowing where your food comes from.
Sustainability
As well as being sustainable for the environment. It’s also a sustainable business for us. By entering into an advance subscription for your food before it’s grown, you make sure your farmer has a reliable income to be able to grow and nurture your food until it’s ready for harvest, without the fear of it going to waste. The CSA model allows us to plan exactly how much to grow and frees up the time it would normally take to market and sell veggies to concentrate on growing your food in the best way possible.
Zero waste
We are proud to be zero waste business. That means we aim to supply as little packaging as possible and anything we do use is completely compostable and biodegradable. We ask you to bring your own reusable bags, containers and boxes to the pick-up point so we can reuse ours. All our paper is 100% recycled and unbleached and all our twine is made from natural jute (a compostable plant fibre). If we need a plastic-like material, we always opt for plant-based containers as they are compostable, made from renewable resources and have a much lower carbon footprint. We even reuse them wherever we can too!
Variety
We grow some exciting heirloom varieties you won’t find in the supermarket and a few things you may never have even heard of. This is the perfect opportunity to experiment with some exciting new recipes. Your cooking and eating habits are likely to change for the better as a result.
Flavour
We eat from our gardens too, so you can be sure our priorities are flavour and freshness. We sell locally so we don’t have to grow varieties that store better but taste worse. This means our carrots are sweet, our peas are juicy and our tomatoes, well…taste like real tomatoes!
Transparency
We welcome you to come out and visit us in the garden to see our methods, with complete tranparency. We host open days and farm events for our members to celebrate every season so you can come along and learn how your food is produced and meet other like-minded members. We are just outside of Eumundi on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland.
Connection
Members have the opportunity to understand the commitment we, as farmers, demonstrate to producing your food in a sustainable and chemical-free way. It is a great opportunity to be connected to the working life of a farm and what’s produced here.
Convenience
We are starting with a conveniently located weekly pick-up point in Noosa. However, we are keen to explore business or personal collection hubs (where we drop off several boxes to a local business or home address and people can come in and collect from there). If you have any suggestions – get in touch! We’d love to hear from you.
Support
To support you with each collection, we produce an accompanying weekly e-newsletter with notes about farm developments, descriptions of what’s in the box, plus some inspirational cooking tips and recipe ideas too.
Exclusive
We are just a small scale farm so we only have a limited number of CSA subscriptions available. That way we can grow great food especially for you. We are advocates of starting small and building up slowly. However, our future vision is not for our business to continue to grow indefinitely. Instead, we believe that this model should be replicated by local farmers in every community. So take the opportunity to join our membership now to secure your weekly veggie boxes. before the spots are all taken up!
What is CSA?
CSA stands for community supported agriculture.
Simply put, it’s a commitment from our CSA members, (the eaters) to purchase delicious seasonal homegrown veggie boxes directly from us (the farmers) for a pre-specified growing season.
Throughout the season you can expect to receive a share of our nutritious and changing harvest each week from Hunters Garden. Each veggie box contains the bounty from our farm, picked and prepared by us on the Sunshine Coast, usually no more than 24 hours before you receive it.
