2025 CSA is Now On Sale!!

Dear Farm Community -

We hope you’ve been bundled up tight and keeping warm during these chilly weeks - and I reckon there just might be something in this newsletter to warm your soul!! While this is a longer newsletter, it’s full of valuable information about the CSA year ahead - and don’t miss our beloved CSA coordinator Averi’s Know Your Farmer at the bottom of the email!

OUR 2025 CSA IS NOW ON SALE!

The Overview
Our 2025 Community Supported Agriculture program will begin in January and span 46 divine weeks, traversing the abundant Georgia seasons and offering up the best of local agriculture. We're talkin’ winter greens to get you allllll those vitamins. We’re talkin’ spring strawberries sweeter than you’ve ever tasted. We’re talkin’ the most tender asparagus you’ve ever eaten. We’re talkin those big juicy otherworldly summer tomatoes that you can eat like an apple!! And flowers to send you over the moon ~ anemones, poppies, tulips, ranunculus, delphinium, gladiolus, foxglove, columbines, sunflowers, lavender, rudbeckia, dahlias, and so so much more. How exciting is that?! If you’re wondering “Are these sublime agrarian delights right for me?” - you can read all about the program on our website. Your burning questions, answered here!

Why CSA is Important
Our CSA program is part of the lifeblood of our farm, and part of how we grow deeper roots in our community. We’re gonna get real here for a second - full transparency, the winter is hard for small-scale farmers. Our income fluctuates hugely between our peaks and valleys of production. In the summer we push hard, work hard, and produce an enormous amount of wholesome, incredibly delicious food that is sold at our farmers markets, sold wholesale to restaurants, and is distributed to our CSA community. In the winter we are still able to grow a good deal of amazing produce, however the weather demands that we scale back considerably, and sometimes cold snaps and mishaps cause crops to fail. So during these cold months we operate at a loss and chip away at that cushion we worked hard to build up in the summer months. This lull in income is one of the things that makes CSA programs so important to smaller scale farms like ours - by having CSA members sign up for their farm shares in the slow season we are able to make it through the winter with a little more security and a little more foresight about the year ahead. We can buy our seeds in confidence, replace or acquire much needed tools without breaking a sweat, fix the headlight that’s been out for a little too long, keep our farmers working, and set ourselves up for a great year ahead with all of the materials and seeds and tools and farmers that we need to make that happen. Our CSA program is a promise that we take to heart. By supporting our farm through a CSA farm share, you’re investing in our success when we need support most, and we’re promising to make good on that investment to you by supplying you with the best of the best all year, sharing ways to use that incredible produce through our newsletter, fostering an inclusive and welcoming community through seasonal on-farm events, offering discounts on our full-year and full-season shares, and giving you the opportunity to help shape following seasons and years by welcoming your feedback! Our CSA program is truly a partnership between farmer and community. We hope you’ll join us for all the abundance that 2025 holds!

Important Dates
Our 2025 CSA is divided into 4 seasons….
WINTER (8 weeks) runs from January 7th - March 1st
- Veggies to expect: Leafy greens (like lettuce, collards, chard, kale, arugula, bok choy), root veggies (like carrots, beets, turnips, and radishes), brassicas (like cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi), celery, herbs, and storage crops (like potatoes and winter squash)

SPRING (13 weeks) runs from March 4th - May 31st
- Veggies to expect: Leafy greens, root veggies, and brassicas, along with springtime favorites like strawberries, asparagus, green garlic, green onions, spring onions, and some early summer produce closer to May.
- Flowers to expect: Springtime flowers include tulips, poppies, anemones, daffodils, and ranunculus among others!

SUMMER (13 weeks) runs from June 3rd - August 30th
- Veggies to expect: Heirloom tomatoes (we grow over a dozen varieties!), cherry tomatoes, eggplants, squash, peppers (bells, corno di toro heirloom, shishito, jimmy nardello, hot peppers, banana peppers), beans, cucumbers, figs, watermelon, cantaloupe, ginger, sweet potato greens, basil, and more.
- Flowers to expect: Zinnias, sunflowers, rudbeckia, statice, gladiolus, campanula, bachelor buttons, delphinium, and more!

FALL (12 weeks) runs from September 2nd - November 22nd
- Veggies to expect: Much of the bounty of summer still thrives in the fall. You’ll also have cooler weather crops returning, like leafy greens, brassicas, sugar snap peas, root veggies, winter squash. Fall holds some of the most abundant harvests!
- Flowers to expect: Dahlias, marigolds, zinnias, sunflowers, eucalyptus, gomphrena, Mexican sage, celosia, cosmos, and more!

Pickup Locations & Home Delivery
For our winter session (Jan 7 - Mar 4) we will be holding CSA pickups on Tuesdays (Athens Montessori) and Thursdays (Athentic Brewing Co) only. Once our Spring session begins we will have Wednesday and Saturday market pickup available as well as Home Delivery. See full pickup location information on our CSA FAQ page.

How to Get in on the Goodness
So many ways to be a CSA member… choose your own adventure below!

Four-Season Shares - Sign up for all four seasons and have easy peasy wholesome produce for all of 2025! Choose between a standard share (good for 1-2 people) or a large share (good for a family or a serious veggie lover!) You can select add-on’s like local pasture-raised eggs (available all 46 weeks) and flowers (begins in spring). Receive a 5% discount AND a free DHF tote bag for hopping on board for the full year!

Three-Season Shares - Sign up for Spring, Summer, and Fall in one go. Choose between standard and large veggie shares, or go for a flower share and receive our most beautiful blooms every week - grown, harvested, and arranged by our talented flower crew. Local pasture-raised eggs are also available as an add-on. Receive a 5% discount AND a free DHF tote bag with a three-season share!

Full Winter Season - Want to go one season at a time? Sign up for our full winter season and receive the same 5% discount as the three- and four-season shares. Spring, Sumer, and Fall will also be available as full-season options as our year moves along.

Weekly-Pay CSA - Easy does it ~ want to go a week at a time? We got you! Our weekly-pay CSA subscription allows you to cancel at any time. Our sign-up for this option will go live on Monday, December 30th! We will include a reminder in the newsletter so you don’t miss it ;)

Help Out a Community Member - Help us remove financial barriers to eating healthy by contributing to our Share the Harvest Fund. Any donation put towards Share the Harvest will go directly towards offsetting the cost of reduced-price, pay-what-you-can veggie shares for a neighbor who otherwise wouldn’t have access.

We hope you’ve enjoyed getting to know some of our farmers better the last two weeks - this week get to know someone who’s likely already a familiar face!

Know Your Farmer:
Averi

What is your role on the farm?
I am Diamond Hill Farm’s CSA coordinator :) I keep track of all of our CSA orders, craft the share contents each week, bring the veggies to our Tuesday and Thursday pickups, and talk to all of my wonderful members that pick up those days. When I’m not doing CSA things, I’m hanging out (working) with the veggie crew. You can catch me at either of our farm locations depending on the day of the week.

Please share your farming journey!
I never dreamed I would be a farmer and yet it feels like a dream come true. I grew up in the Atlanta suburbs with zero exposure to agriculture. I started at UGA majoring in undecided, but when I ran out of classes to take my advisor told me I had to choose something. In high school my favorite classes were environmental science and culinary, and when I came across horticulture (which I had never heard of) I thought it sounded like a fun mix of the two- sustainability, food, and nature! I took a few classes and did an internship out at the UGArden and loved getting to be so hands on with the crops and cook what I grew myself. I also learned the value of local farm systems and sustainable practices. A month or so before I graduated I still didn’t know what I wanted to do but through A LOT of thought and prayer I ended up Diamond Hill! I’m coming up on my one year farmiversary in January and I can’t imagine any place I’d rather be.

What do you like to do when you're not at the farm?
Honestly most of my time outside of the farm is spent sitting at home talking to my roommates- they’re my fav people. I also enjoy hiking, playing pickleball, watching movies, trying new restaurants, cooking, and reading.

A little fun fact about Averi….
I love traveling and experiencing new cultures. I spent 6 weeks in India a few summers ago and fell in love with it. Then the next summer I lived in Spain doing viticulture research. I’ve also been to some other super cool places and I love talking about them ;). Excited for whatever my next adventure is.

What’s something you’ve done on the farm that you are proud of?
While this was far more than anything I did myself I’m really proud of how our CSA program has grown this past year. We hit over 100 veggie shares which is pretty awesome. More than the numbers though I’m proud to know so many of our members. I truly enjoy getting to talk to our members at the afternoon pickups- they’re such cool people. Seeing them interact with eachother and with the farmers at our end of season potluck was really special too.

What is a small thing on the farm that you are grateful for?
How beautiful it is!! At least once a day I look up from what I’m doing and just marvel at how incredible the dirt and crops and sky are. Sometimes I just lay in the grass for a minute and look up at the sky just to take it all in- the farmers and I call it sky time :) When it’s that beautiful how can you not admire it!?

What is your favorite crop to eat?
Everything we grow except cilantro. Cherry tomatoes and sugar snap peas are definitely up there.

What crop would you be and why?
Parsley. The other farmers and I have discussed it. It just makes sense.

What do you think about when you’re harvesting?
I think a lot about Jesus’ parables. He uses the imagery of farming so much throughout the New Testament- sowing seeds, weeding, harvesting, pruning. Actually doing those things day in and day out brings so much meaning out of the parables for me and I love meditating on them during long farm tasks.

We’re all in the pack shed finishing up a big market harvest and you’re handed the AUX. What do you play?
I’m typically the last person people want to give the AUX to at any function! My Spotify has ads and I’m kind of notorious for my poor music taste (I just don’t listen to music much.) BUT I think the Hamilton soundtrack would go hard finishing up a Friday harvest.

What is your favorite thing about Diamond Hill Farm?
The community. I feel so blessed to have a job I look forward to going to everyday and a huge part of that is my coworkers. They’re just real, kind, hardworking, funny people that care for eachother. I love the random conversations we have while harvesting and the games we play during long weeding projects, and the hangouts we have outside of work because we genuinely enjoy spending time with one another.

What is something you want people to know about our farm?
It’s full of good people who love growing food and flowers for you :) thanks for being the reason we get to do what we love

Thanks for reading and hope you’ll join us for 2025!
Diamond Hill Farmers

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