CSA Week 2026: Kingfisher Farm Market Q+A

Posted on Tuesday, 10 February 2026 under Stories

Kingfisher Farm Market is a small farm in South Surrey growing vegetables and flowers. As well as their on-site Tuesday farm market and roadside stand, they have a Friday Farmer’s box option.

What challenges do you face when running a CSA program annually?

“Customers expect a much higher level of convenience compared to when I started farming in 2005. Home delivery is the norm for many products and services. We try to aggregate boxes into pick-up hubs, and this can be a barrier for some potential customers. Most of our farm’s sales are done at our own on-farm market, which has saved us the expense of having a larger truck or delivery van. While we value having a CSA, we struggle to figure out a scale that makes it efficient to run. It would be more efficient to have a larger number of CSA shares to prepare and deliver at one time. But increasing the scale of our CSA would make our current delivery system (with our small truck or our personal car) impossible, and so far we’ve been reluctant to invest in a delivery van.”

Photo by Erin Girard

How do you communicate value with your CSA members?

“There are multiple kinds of ‘value’ involved in the relationship between a farmer and their CSA members. We try to communicate to our customers that there is value to themselves and to the wider community in having a viable and thriving farm in their area. (We check “values” boxes of caring for the soil and ecosystem of our farm and of the watershed we are a part of, of providing meaningful work to people in the community, of maintaining the knowledge and skills of growing a lot of food in a small area, etc.). We also provide value to our customers by being transparent about the pricing of what they receive. They pay an amount that translates to a particular dollar value per box that they receive. Each item in the box has a value, and we ensure that each box reaches the value that our customers have paid for. Because we have many seasons of farming experience, we are confident that we have the ability to provide the value that people have paid for week after week.

Our CSA is a “farmer’s choice” style of box, and while we do give our customers the opportunity to add items to their box (using a Google form), they have to be willing to try anything we choose to include in the CSA that week. Most folks who join a CSA are willing to have their palate stretched and are excited to try new things (kohlrabi or shishito peppers are new to many folks, for example). This kind of culinary adventure can be seen as an added value of the CSA experience, or a deterrent for folks who are less flexible and want more control and choice. This kind of CSA is not for everyone!”

Photos by Erin Girard

What strategies help you balance member expectations with the realities of farming?

“We started a regular email newsletter in our first years of farming. This has been a very important way to share our story with our customers and to help them grasp what seasonal eating in our climate can look like. We believe that this kind of communication helps us, over time, to keep our customers committed to supporting their local farm and having a reasonable expectation of what we can provide for them.”

To learn more about Kingfisher Farm Market and their CSA program, visit their website.