12 Great CSAs in the DC Area

Get on board with fresh produce delivery, here’s how to join

By Jessica Wolfrom, Edible DC Contributor

It’s never been easier to live in a city and eat like a farmer. 

In the District, we are spoiled year round by the many farmers markets and restaurants that celebrate the bounty of regional cuisine.  

But if the winter chill has kept you away from the markets (and it shouldn’t—there is still wonderful winter produce and farmers to support), there’s another way to connect with farmers from the comfort of your home — let them bring the farm to you. 

February 22nd is CSA Day, a celebration of our local foodsheds and a call to action to support the farmers who make our seasonal and regional food possible.

CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture, is a system that connects the farmer with the consumer more directly by circumventing the grocery store. It’s essentially a subscription service for produce, meats, and dairy, delivered straight from the farm to your door. 

The money you pay up front supports the harvest of that farm for the entire year. Think of it like a down payment on your health; invest in your farmer, and eat healthier all year. (Not to mention eating local reduces your carbon footprint.)

[And in more happy CSA news—we’ve learned that Imperfect Produce, a company founded to help combat food waste by taking fresh, delicious produce that normally wouldn’t sell because it might be misshapen or have a harmless bump and saving it from landfill. Founded University of Maryland grad Ben Simon, Imperfect Produce has now grown nationally and is now delivering to the MD/DC area. Check their website to see if they are delivering to your neighborhood.]

Here are twelve local food delivery and CSA’s we love, and news on another new CSA. And you will too. Take it from us, nothing makes you happier than coming home to a box of fresh produce. The the names of the CSAs are linked to their websites for for information on how to join and additional details.

This month, do good for your body and your community by registering for a CSA. 

Windy Hill Farm CSA (Single farm CSA)

Offers CSA pick-up in Chevy Chase, DC as well as limited local delivery. Windy Hill Farm also offers reduced cost CSA shares to low-income community members. More details on how the CSA works here.

Second Spring Farm CSA (Single Farm CSA)

Operates May - November and offers a plethora of pick up locations including Leesburg, Reston/Herndon, Oakton, Vienna, Ashburn, Arlington, Springfield, Glen Echo, Takoma Park, Bethesda, Columbia Heights, and at the farm in Purcellville. You have the option for a small or large size box that includes plenty of recipes.

Owl’s Nest Farm CSA (Single Farm CSA)

Offers organic produce from their farm in Upper Marlboro, MD. Pickup locations are offered in Bloomingdale, Brookland, Columbia Heights, and Petworth, DC, and on the farm in Upper Marlboro, MD.

Even’ Star Organic Farm (Single Farm CSA)

Certified organic vegetables, fruits and herbs offered Bethesda, Alexandria, South Arlington, North Arlington, Takoma Park, University Park, Chevy Chase, Rockville, Lexington Park, Leondardtown, and Waldorf.

Clagett Farm (Single Farm CSA)

Operates May - November pick up offered in Dupont Circle for $700 and helps support their ability to donate 40-50% of their produce to area soup kitchens.

4P Foods (Network of Farmers)

Example 4p Foods spring box! (Photo credit Abbey Gleason)

4P isn’t just one farmer, it’s a network of farmers. The 4P team delivers produce, meat, and dairy from environmentally responsible family farmers in the DMV foodshed. Not only will you receive food from a variety of farmers, your subscription will feed others — for every 10 bags it delivers, it will give one to local food banks including Fauquier Food Bank, Local Food Bank Partners and YMCA Capital View.

Cultivate the City (Single Farm CSA)

Cultivate the City is part urban farm, part education program, part garden center. Its CSA program sources food from both its H Street Farm and school gardens like Miner Elementary, Gallaudet University and IDEA Public Charter School. Your subscription will support farm programming and garden activities for youth in schools around the District.

In addition, any extra produce that isn’t picked up is donated to local food pantries, reducing food waste and providing for community members who otherwise may not have access to healthy foods.

Little Farm Stand (Network of Farmers)

Little Farm Stand proudly claims to be the “most flexible CSA in Washington D.C.,” allowing its members to choose up to 90% of their weekly shares. With a focus on local, organic produce and Virginia raised grass-fed beef, this CSA is perfect for picky eaters and locavores alike. 

Lancaster Farms Co-Op (Co-Op)

Lancaster Farms is a co-op of multi-generational families bringing Certified Organic, chemical-free produce and humanely raised meat to the DMV from their headquarters in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Its motto is “locally rooted, sustainably minded” and this ethos penetrates every part of their business. Choose the size of your weekly share, and find a pick-up location that works best for you. This model encourages new communities to take root around its food, and your subscription helps continue Lancaster’s farming traditions for generations to come.

From the Farmer (Network of Farmers)

From the Farmer was started in 2010 by two friends-turned business partners who met at the University of Denver. From the Farmer delivers fresh farm boxes to the Washington D.C. area with an emphasis on local, organic and seasonal produce, meats, seafood and other artisanal treats. 

You can customize your farm box based on your gastronomic allegiances — electing for example, an all veggie box or an all fruit box — and you can eat happy knowing that 50% of every dollar goes directly back to the farmer or maker. 

Washington’s Green Grocer (Network of Farmers)

Photo courtesy Washington’s Green Grocer

If you are iffy about commitment and overwhelmed by what to do with kohlrabi, then this is the perfect CSA for you. Not only does Washington’s Green Grocer allow you to customize your box up to 9 PM the night before delivery, it doesn’t require a weekly commitment. To help the less adventurous home chefs explore the bounty of our regional foods, its website doubles as a repository of recipes for its seasonal produce. It also offers free delivery to Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and D.C. on all farm boxes over $40. 

FRESHFARM Farm Share (Network of Farmers)

While not a traditional CSA, FRESHFARM is re-thinking the food supply model by offering a farm share program that supports local farmers and food artisans in the mid-Atlantic region. It doesn’t deliver to your doorstep, but if you are the type who frequents farmers markets around the district, this is the share for you. It’s all the fun of the farmers market without the stress of fighting over those last-of-the-season strawberries. Its share season runs from mid-May through the end of October and you can choose to subscribe to a half season (12 weeks) or a full season (24 weeks). 

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Jessica @jessicawolfrom is a freelance writer covering food, wine, farming and the environment in and around Washington D.C. She's also a graduate student at Georgetown University, getting her masters in journalism. When she's not in school, you can likely find her sipping on something sparkling somewhere in the District.

"There's Work to Do"

By Lani Furbank, Photography by Rey Lopez

Hugo Mogollon is the executive director of Community Foodworks, a nonprofit rethinking the farmers market, putting it to work for more people.

After hours of packing produce, Hugo Mogollon finally has a moment to rest and watch the farmers selling stone fruit, squash and beans to their customers—many of them immigrants from El Salvador, Ethiopia or Vietnam.

As executive director of Community Foodworks, the nonprofit that runs this Columbia Heights Farmers Market and 13 like it in the region, Mogollon reflects on how the market’s multicultural audience—including customers who could afford the premiums for local produce and those who could not—helped shape the organization from the start.

“The fact that the neighborhood was so mixed-income, that’s what set the whole culture and our mission,” he says. “This is what made us realize that everybody has to have the same access to the same produce.”

Mogollon joined Community Foodworks in 2015 after moving to the United States from Ecuador. When he came on board, the nonprofit was managing three farmers markets and had just received a grant to open a second Columbia Heights market on Wednesdays and develop a community-supported agriculture (CSA) harvest subscription program for low-income residents.

On a warm evening in July, the Wednesday market buzzes with energy. Children splash in the Civic Plaza fountain while a line of people waiting to receive their Produce Plus checks stretches down the block.

The food community credits Mogollon’s leadership for the market’s incredible growth, but he isn’t interested in taking it. “I have been lucky to have this amazing group of people that are passionate about what we do, and that’s why this works,” he says. “CFW is what it is because of the staff.”

Providing equal access to quality produce sounds like a simple concept, but focusing on that mission helped Community Foodworks find its niche in an already robust food landscape.

Even as more markets grow their programs to serve the typically underserved, Community Foodworks’ focus on residents who might not otherwise have access to local food stands out.

Lindsay Smith, a planning and food systems consultant who has worked with Mogollon for the last few years, says that’s especially true “in a city with such an impressive amount of talent dedicated to improving food security.”

“The heart, optimism and strategic thinking that Hugo has brought not to just Community Foodworks but also to serving farmers markets nationally is striking to me,” she says.

Mogollon, who serves on the national Farmers Market Coalition board, has a core belief that farmers market and local food culture should cater to customers of all income levels—which meant the organization had to rethink programs that traditionally didn’t.

Mogollon looked at the disconnect between the farmer and certain residents and decided, “there’s work to do.” So Community Foodworks developed not one, but several unique models of distribution to connect those residents with fresh, local produce.

Mogollon’s organization designed its community-supported agriculture program with flexibility to serve all members of the Columbia Heights community.

Sharing the market

Every Wednesday evening during the growing season, rows of burlap tote bags line up under pop-up tents at the market. Spring onion tops spill out of the bags, hiding a week’s worth of produce—summer squash, peppers, tomatoes in the summer, Butternut squash, potatoes and hearty greens in the fall. They’re awaiting pickup by dozens of participants in the Market Share program, a unique interpretation of community-supported agriculture.

“A normal CSA works in a way that you pay a chunk of money at the beginning of the year, and that way you support the farmer to do all the work for the year,” Mogollon explains. “But for low-income residents, they don’t have the luxury to have that amount of money and put in the chunk at the beginning of the year.”

His organization has designed the program with flexibility to serve all members of the Columbia Heights community. To that end, Market Share buys wholesale from three local farms, and then grants and donations allow low-income residents to pay weekly with federal nutrition benefits such as SNAP or WIC, and receive their share at a 75% discount.

“We see that it’s always this idea, ‘Because you are low-income, your food is also going to be a lower quality,’” Mogollon says. With Market Share, “you receive exactly the same bag, exactly the same product—which is a prime product—at a very low price.”

In addition to the hundreds of customers who pick up their produce at various locations each week through the program that began in 2015, Market Share also serves 200 seniors who are homebound by delivering a bag to their door.

“The order that we were asking the farmers to bring kept becoming larger and larger as we added more people,” Mogollon says. Now, the Market Share purchases account for more than half of what farmers make at Community Foodworks markets.

This sparked an idea about how to address lack of food access in Wards 7 and 8, which are underserved by grocery stores and farmers markets because “residents don’t have the disposable income,” Mogollon says. He wanted to find a way to reduce the risk for farmers who might not otherwise be able to sell there.

Mogollon explains that one method of incentivizing risky markets is to pay the farmer a certain sum, regardless of what they sell. “That model has the flaw that those dollars go to the farmer, but the food goes nowhere,” he says.

Instead, Community Foodworks launched a suite of solutions to serve residents in those wards: a pop-up food hub and satellite vegetable stands. “We think that all these low-income areas are an untapped market for farmers,” Mogollon says. “We’re not competing or taking a share of the market from other food hubs…Our clients are a different kind of client, the kind that’s not being served.”

The pop-up food hub operates in tandem with a farmers market, treating it as a “natural point of aggregation” and helping farmers sell more food to more people during each trip to the city.

Minimum order requirements often prevent small organizations like churches, early-care centers and clinics from procuring their food from a conventional food hub. “That’s the barrier we want to break,” Mogollon says. Community Foodworks compiles small orders, places one wholesale order with the farmer, and then delivers the other orders to each organization.

“The demand is huge. We started last year, and we were thinking, ‘Let’s find five clients,’” Mogollon says. “By the end of the year, we’re working with 47 organizations.”

The satellite vegetable stands also amplify sales by allowing the farmers to send some of their produce to a separate location, where a community member is employed to sell the food on behalf of the farmer. In 2016, CFW had just one farmers market in Ward 7 on a Saturday, and that year the farmers made around $11,000.

“Last year, we had three veggie stands, and they made $65,000—in the same trip, with same effort,” Mogollon says. “If you work to solve food insecurity but you don’t think about the farmer, you are not creating justice.”