Thank you for inquiring about Shared Acres a Community Support Agriculture Program (CSA).   Shared Acres is not your normal purveyor of produce -- we grow solely for our shareholders.  This allows us to concentrate on growing healthy, fresh food, for a fair wage. To put it simply, the shareholders will have a dedicated garden for vegetables and also receive a portion of the fruits, herbs, and flowers grown throughout Shared Acres.  The gardening technique used is an expansion of the “gardening by the square foot” method developed by Mel Bartholomew.  This method takes one fifth the space as the conventional method of row cropping and also saves time and energy for tending to the garden.   The generational success our family has had with this method, as well as a love of gardening, has inspired us to create this CSA. 

Shared Acres will implement biodynamic methods which integrate common sense agriculture, an understanding of ecology and the specific environment of a given commons, with a new spiritual scientific approach to the concepts, principles and practices of agriculture which begins with treating the soil as a living organism.  We are not yet organically certified but plan to institute United States Department Agriculture Organic Standards so that we can be certified.  To achieve organic certification, three years of documentation and inspections are required. 

All share holders are welcome to visit Shared Acres to see first hand how their produce is grown and to inspect and review our documentation.   In fact, the CSA concept stems from the Japanese concept called teikei, which literally translated as “cooperation” and philosophically translates as “knowing the face of the farmer.”  To learn more about CSA concept and Biodynamic gardening please visit http://www.biodynamics.com.  If you would like to find out more about our specific planting and harvesting techniques you can read Dwayne’s paper “Optimizing the Diversity of a Harvest” .

Thank you for your interest.  We look forward to your participation in Shared Acres and the opportunity to grow a healthy harvest for you.

The Bauknights