MAJOR upgrade to our CSA signup!

Do you remember when you used to sign up for our CSA through a Google form? All of those entries were compiled in a lengthy spreadsheet.

I would sort the entries and add the emails manually to a tag on our email service, then send the payment info manually to everyone, doing my best to keep track of the process in the spreadsheet.

It was clunky and time consuming, but it mostly worked.

I’m so excited to announce: that archaic process is now a thing of the past!

Now the CSA is a product in our online store and we can set the stock to whatever our goal is. When it’s sold out, we’re done.

The early bird sale is set up on a schedule and ends at the set date.

This new website makes things much more streamlined and it’s now easier than ever to join. You go to the product page for the CSA, choose your fulfillment method, add to cart, add any CSA add-ons you want, then checkout.

You can choose to pay with cash, check, zelle, venmo or credit card. Receipts, payment instructions and updates are automatically emailed and a TexasEcoFarms.com account is created for you. An email is sent automatically for you to set a password for your new account.

Once I receive payment, I confirm your membership with a simple click and you’ll receive a confirmation email.

After your order is confirmed, you’re automatically subscribed to our CSA members email list (meaning I don’t have to parse through the sign ups, find out who’s missing, and add each email individually).

THIS IS AMAZING 🤯

Now that you have an account on our website, we can do things like offer members-only perks, content areas, blog posts, guides and ebooks for download, and have members-only products for sale (such as extra produce in a private online farm stand).

These things aren’t all built yet, but I can’t wait. There’s a lot of opportunity to improve the CSA even more with the website.

I hope this makes the CSA signup process easier and simpler for you. Please let me know if you have any troubles at all checking out!

NOTE: the account setup is important, please make sure to open the account creation email and set a password after checking out.

If you don’t already have a password manager, I highly recommend using Bitwarden or something like it to generate and remember secure passwords for you.

There’s not currently a way to completely restrict this CSA launch to members only since our members don’t have a TexasEcoFarms.com account yet, but we’re keeping the launch quiet until Monday 5/23/22 to give y’all a chance to sign up before I send it to the free email list and post it on social media.

We’d love to have you back for another season!

You might be wondering: it doesn’t start until September, why do I need to sign up so soon?

First, out of convenience for you. We like to launch the next season before the current one ends so you can simply bring payment to the farm during CSA pickup or leave it out for us to collect during delivery.

Part of the beauty of the CSA model is that it provides the necessary capital for the growing season upfront. This helps with scaling the farm up over time. Our first CSA season, we had 22 members. This is our fourth season, we have 62 members.

We start planting for the Fall season no more than two weeks after this season ends. Before planting we need to have purchased all of the seed, compost, fertilizer, amendments, tools and other materials for the season. Buying these materials upfront helps reduce the effect of increasing inflation and shortages.

We can also use the capital to hire labor, something we’re looking to do much more of soon!

We don’t want to get into a situation where the season is starting and we didn’t meet our goal for memberships. Getting the CSA filled is a huge weight off our shoulders during the break between seasons. We use this time to get caught up on projects, plant, and rejuvenate our fields.