Thoughts on Splitting a CSA Share

Dividing a share can be a great way to experience a CSA!

Although we’re still about a month away from our first harvest, it’s a good time to do some thinking and planning for the upcoming season. If you are splitting a share for the first time, you may want to have a conversation with your partner to make sure you have a common understanding about the upcoming harvest.

Are we paid up?
We send invoices to only the first/primary name on the membership form. It is up to that primary member to either collect from the other member, or remind the member to pay their share to our farm. Your account will need to be paid in full to participate in the first harvest distribution.

How will we pick up our share?
We ask that members take the entire weekly share in one visit to the farm, or in a single delivered box. At the farm, you may not take a partial or half share. There are a couple of ways to handle this:
1.  Pick up your share together and divvy it up then. We are fine with that happening at the farm, as long as it doesn’t hold up the line for our other members.
2.  Alternate pickup weeks. The advantage of this arrangement is that you only have to deal with pickup half the time, and you do not have to plan your pickup time around another member. We are sympathetic to our members who are waiting around at pickup while his/her partner is delayed!

How will we divide our share?
Keep in mind that every share is the same, regardless of whether or not the share is being divided. Some of the contents of the share may not split equally or easily. As an example, you may get 1 watermelon, 5 carrots, 5 tomatoes, and/or 1 head of cabbage. It will be up to you to decide how to divvy it up.

When Tracy, our director of marketing, joined her first CSA program, she divided a share with her friend, Jackie. Here’s how they worked it out.

Tracy and Jackie alternated picking up the weekly share and taking it home. On your pickup weeks, it was up to you to divide any amounts that didn’t divide easily.

As an example with the share above, Tracy might divide it this way:
- She would take 2 carrots and give Jackie 3, and then take 3 tomatoes and give Jackie 2.
- She would cut the cabbage in half and the watermelon in half, so that they each got half.

On Jackie’s week, she might decide it differently. She might give Tracy the whole cabbage and keep the whole watermelon.

Once the pickup person was done dividing the share at home, she’d leave it in a bag on her front porch for the other person to pick up at her convenience.

 3. Is everyone getting communications?
This year, we’ve added space on our membership form for information about a second member. That way, we can send emails to both members. We also have another phone number to call if the share is not picked up (we will make courtesy reminder calls the first few weeks). If you would like additional email addresses on our email distribution list (such as for spouses), please feel to call or email Tracy or Mary at office@wickhamfarms.com or 377-3276.

Questions about splitting shares? Feel free to email Tracy at office@wickhamfarms.com.