I joined Yelp just to warn people about Fresh and Local. We signed up for a 2011 share and it's…read morebeen incredibly disappointing. $600 for 18 weeks is actually $600 for 15 weeks because of the weeks that it's not delivered. And for that price (somewhere between $33 and $40 per week), we got about $4 worth of (bad) produce. We're talking sometimes 1/3 of a grocery bag, and always less than half a bag.
For the first five or six weeks, we got the same thing: some wilted lettuce and dirty potatoes. There was usually also a sandwich bag of stevia (who in the heck uses stevia?), a fistful of greens (about half a serving when you cook them), and eventually some over-ripe tomatoes that exploded all over my counter. One week we got corn, but the worms in it had eaten most of the kernels. It got to the point where my compost pile ate more of our F&L than we did. At least their basil was good, but so was mine from my herb garden. I was paying for vegetables.
I can get over the fact that F&L isn't good at growing vegetables, or at least did a terrible job of managing expectations of its customers. Their web site lists dozens of different vegetable that we could expect, like several different squashes, cucumbers, several different types of greens. We didn't get that stuff. But the single worst part: Farmer Allen.
The first commenter is right on. Farmer Allen's emails are at least trite, and usually demanding and outright infuriating. Here's an excerpt. It's from the general distirbution list (sorry, Maura, you're wrong):
"No one, I repeat, with the exception of Brooke from Shepherdstown, no one from the CSA has been out to help for weeks now. We have lots of simple weeding tasks that we really need the help of additional hands for. If you can come out now, please do. (But, as I always say: If you don't want to, don't feel that you have to!) Fortunately, several non-CSA people who are filled with passion for the plight of the small local farm have started helping at the farm a few hours a week."
Screw you, Allen! Your customers are in DC, don't have cars, and are paying you to grow food and bring it to them! Allen, I'm paying you for a service: to bring me vegetables. I want the delivery, quantity, and quality to justify the $30-$40 I pay you each week. Don't complain that I don't come to West Virignia to pick them for you. If I were going to do that, I would just grow them myself. Don't complain about working outside or in the rain: you chose to be a farmer and I don't care. You were sick one week. That's fine. But give me a refund for the weeks that you didn't come, or ESPECIALLY didn't have enough vegetables (!?wtf?!?) to justify a delivery.
Are there bright points....yes. They have good chicken and really good eggs. I would even consider just getting chickens and eggs next year and forgoing the vegetables. And some of his assistants (Maura? Mary?) seem genuinely friendly and more than willing to go out of their way to help. One way they could help is by kicking Allen off of the email and managing the communications, as Allen's emails are a leading reason--after the poor quality and/or total lack of the shares--that we won't be using F&L next year.
