Want to eat better this summer and support local farmers? One of the tastiest things you can do is to join a farmshare. Here’s how it works. You pay money up front to a farmer at the beginning of the season. They use that money to buy seeds, hire farmers, and grow food. And you become a shareholder in the farm. As a shareholder, you share in the harvest of that single farm, via a box of produce each week.
In June you might get early greens, ramps, scallions, new potatoes and the first sweetest strawberries you’ll ever eat. In late August you might have so many tomatoes you’ll have to invite friends over to make sauce. In October your box might be overflowing with squash, pumpkins, chard.
Since 2011, Clover has paved the way to connect urban customers with local farms by offering our restaurants free to our favorite farms as pickup points for farmshares. Why? Farmers don’t have to wait with their shares, and can spend more time and resources doing what they do best: growing food. And customers love being able to swing by their nearest Clover anytime between 3pm and closing time to pick up their bounty. And CSAs are significantly cheaper week-to-week than shopping at a grocery store or a farmers market.
Signups are now live for Summer 2017, and if you sign up for your share anytime before Monday at midnight, you’ll get FREE admission for you and a friend to one of our May cooking classes (Quick Pickling, Hot Sauce 101, or Knife Skills 101) so that you can be ready to hit the ground chopping when your first share arrives.
Which share should you pick? Click on the Farmshares sidebar to learn more about each farm, then join us on May 10 for Meet the Farmer Night at CloverFIN, a free event attended by all the farmers in the program. You’ll be able to meet them in person, talk about their growing practices, eat some yummy seasonal food and hear some live music. Be sure to register in advance – you’ll be entered into a raffle to win a chef’s knife and some other cool prizes. The deadline to sign up for a farmshare is June 1.
