City Commons and Covid-19

City Commons Supporters-First of all, we hope that you and your families are physically and emotionally well. Us farmers are very happy that it is spring time and that gardening is a safe activity to do at a social distance.Even if we can hang out with tomato plants to escape the stresses of our current moment, we are also thinking about the Covid-19 Pandemic and how we necessarily need to respond. We are concerned first and foremost about customer and farmer safety- but also want to be sure that in economic upheaval we can continue getting local vegetables to our long time customers. Below is a brief outline of how we are thinking about this challenge, please give us any feedback, this is *Community* Supported Agriculture, and in times like this community is more important than ever.-If your financial situation has changed we want to work with you. Whether this means that you need a full refund for your share, you need to set up a payment plan, you already have a payment plan that needs adjustment, or you want to switch from a full to half share. Please e-mail us and let's start the conversation.-We will be pre-packing all shares this year, ideally in some kind of box that we can reuse and disinfect. We're doing research right now and will have more information as we figure it out. While we generally like being able to hand folks each item of their CSA and it takes us a lot less time than packing individually, we know that reducing person to person contact is going to keep us all a lot safer this year.-We already do a lot of handwashing when packing the CSA shares for food safety purposes, but we'll also be adding rubber gloves and other hygiene measures to our packing routine. We're still doing reasearch to figure out all the measures we'll be taking, but know that it is on our mind.-While our current plan is to still be at Eastern Market on Saturdays starting in May, we realize that shopping at a Farmer's Market may not be a safe place for those with health concerns this summer. We are working on setting up an online ordering system through the Farmigo software we already use to serve those for whom going to a farmer's market might not be an option.-We will also be altering our farmer's market procedures in keeping with best practices, including no longer allowing folks to crowd into our booth, no touching products before you've bought them, and extra hygiene procedures. Eastern Market is developing new reccomendations right now and by May we'll have a good idea of what constitutes best practices.If you have any concerns or suggestions that aren't listed here, please let us know. We're all figuring this out together.Thanks as always for your support of local food,Alice, Donny, Eli, Elizabeth, Emily, Leandra, Molly, Ollie, Roxanne, and the rest of the City Commons Crew PS We still have shares available for sign up, but we are almost sold out. Go to citycommonscsa.com/shop