“Yes, you get some veggies to take home,” says Liz Adler of Mountain View Farm in Easthampton about becoming a member of their community supported agriculture (CSA) program. “But if you want it, the whole experience is a lot more than that.”

On the surface, CSA programs are simple: customers pay a farm up front for a CSA membership, and in exchange take home a portion of that farm’s harvest. Some people become CSA members to save money, taking home local food for less than it usually costs to buy it retail. Others want to expand their culinary horizons, either with a produce CSA or one for local meat, dairy, eggs, or even grains and beans, all of which and more are offered by western Massachusetts farms. Still others join CSAs to widen their social circles or to involve themselves or their families more deeply with where their food comes from.

As CSA farms go, it’s hard to find one with more practice — or more public support — than Mountain View Farm, run by Adler and her husband, Ben Perrault.

“We’re heading into our 20th season next year, and for the last 16 years we’ve been named the best CSA farm in the Valley according to the Valley Advocate,” Adler says. “Altogether we farm over 100 acres in Easthampton, Northampton and Hadley, and have more than 2,000 CSA members, all of them local and many of them with us for a long time.”

Perrault started farming right after high school, working on several farms in Vermont and Massachusetts including a longer stint at the original Food Bank Farm, run in partnership with the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. Adler took a different path, getting a master’s degree in education before eventually joining forces with her husband to open Mountain View.

Today, most of Mountain View’s farmland is leased from other landowners, including 60 acres from Mass Audubon and 35 acres from the Food Bank. With the latter organization, “we have a unique relationship,” Adler explains. “Instead of paying cash rent, we give them organic produce – over two million pounds since we started. We often grow more than we can sell, and they can give it to people who need it.”

The remaining acres are their home base in Easthampton, including their family home and the buildings where members come to pick up their CSA shares. Behind these are large fields of you-pick produce, herbs, and flowers, and even a kids play area.

Over time, Adler and Perrault built the kind of CSA farm where, if they weren’t the farmers, they would want to be members. Schedule flexibility, a family-friendly atmosphere and opportunities to engage kids with the farm all seemed important to their own family. So, that’s the experience they create for their members.

Mountain View Farm’s main season CSA – which is currently accepting new members for 2025 – includes 21 weeks of produce from early June through October and offers members a lot of choice. CSA shares come in three sizes: a small feeds one to two people, a medium feeds three to four, and a large is designed for big households or for two households to easily split. Rather than accepting a pre-made box of produce, most weeks people can choose to take home whatever they want from each category of produce, up to a certain weight. Members can pick up their shares and harvest generously from the you-pick gardens any time the farm is open – typically Tuesday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

In addition to their main-season CSA, Mountain View also offers a winter CSA share that runs from November through January. That includes five free-choice distributions of produce like carrots, potatoes and sweet potatoes, each totaling over 20 pounds.

As a business model, the benefits of a CSA break both ways. “Farmers tend to get more autonomy and a more predictable market,” says Adler. “Customers get better value. I mean, our small share is $26 per week. If you walked into grocery store with $26, you couldn’t get anything close to the amount of organic produce you get here each week.”

Covering the upfront cost can be a financial barrier. However, anyone who qualifies for SNAP (formerly food stamps) or HIP (the Massachusetts Healthy Incentives Program) can use those benefits to pay for a CSA share at Mountain View or several other local farms. Plus, some healthcare companies offer a wellness credit that can be put towards a CSA share, and UMass Five College Federal Credit Union also offers a farm share loan, where people take out money to cover the upfront costs and pay it back over six months with 0% interest. Together, those strategies make CSA membership far more approachable.

That’s good news for anyone looking for new inspiration for what to cook or eat, since joining a CSA program almost always shifts members’ perspectives about food.

“Part of the joy and adventure is being encouraged to try new things,” says Adler. She loves the chance to teach members both about enjoying new-to-them foods and about the realities of farming, often through weekly newsletters. Those kinds of interactions usually don’t happen when farmers and eaters are separated by a middle business, like a grocery store. CSA programs make it possible.

“Finding recipes is also one of the few reasons we’re better off with the internet,” Adler adds, laughing. “Type in celeriac (celery root) and you’ll get like 10,000 recipes. We love making stocks with it or pureeing it with fresh herbs for a delicious and creamy soup. Watermelon radishes are another current favorite, which we love eating raw, roasted or as a quick pickle. Quick pickles are so easy and good. You just boil the right amount of sugar, vinegar and water to make a brine, and pour it over them in a jar. You can quick pickle almost anything.”

As the new year dawns, CSA farms are already planning for next summer. Signing up for a CSA sooner rather than later offers farmers and eaters more certainty, and something to look forward to during the chilly winter months.

Jacob Nelson is communications coordinator for CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture). To learn more about local farms offering CSAs near you, visit buylocalfood.org.