Singer Hill Gardens

I suppose it doesn’t matter any more, since Singer Hill has pulled their website and apparently have no intention of returning to the CSA game, but I think there should nonetheless be a warning for anyone considering doing business with Jacob and Jessica Dean. We purchased shares with them because we were lead to believe (by the now-​nonexistent website) that they already had a year’s experience operating a CSA under their belts, and were knowledgeable organic farmers. It turns out they had neither experience nor knowledge, and managed to lose all of their crops in what was not an altogether terrible growing season. They cancelled a little over halfway through the season we’d signed up for, after three months of disappointing deliveries. Worse, the members who paid $ 800 to have meat and cheese added to their shares never received either.

Very disappointing experience. I’ve never paid up front for a CSA before, and I will avoid it in the future, since we didn’t receive anything close to what we paid for. The deliveries in the first half of the season were much smaller than promised. Some of the vegetables were too small to even use. And then they just canceled the whole thing.
I realize they had a lot of problems, but I can’t help feeling that they sold too many shares up front and promised too much.

What a disappointment. I don’t want to say anything too scathing because the owners of Singer Hill Gardens seem like nice people and I really believe they want to contribute to the local organic food scene. However the weekly shares were paltry, they cancelled the season after 11 weeks of the 25 promised, and there were a lot of other small problems that suggested they are inexperienced at farming and at running a business.
I know a fundamental part of buying into a CSA is shared risk and I know this means that if I believe in this model I should support farmers through tough times. However the CSA model only works if the good years make up for the bad years and over the course of many years the customer gets a return on their investment that they feel is worthwhile. In the case of Singer Hill Gardens I think it’s very unlikely they could deliver enough in future years to make up for this catastrophic year. I don’t plan to stick around to find out. I think they’re going to have a very hard time recovering.

I’d like to start off by saying that I recognize 2011 has been a hard growing year for some vegetables. However, the results from Singer Hill all spring and summer were just completely underwhelming.
This is a tiny, tiny operation, and it showed. Any time one of their farmers got sick, pick up for the week got canceled. The shares were meager each week – definitely not enough for a family of four or a couple vegetarians, as they promise. We got enough veggies for a couple dinners a week. The quality was fine, but overall I was not impressed. Finally, on Sept. 6, 2011, they canceled the remainder of their season.
Now, I’ve been part of a CSA before in a bad growing year, but I’ve never seen such a catastrophic failure before. Basically, I felt like I was part of an experiment all season as they tried to get their act together. If you don’t mind that, this could be the CSA for you. If you prefer having peace of mind that you’ll get something for your investment, choose another CSA.