Helsing Junction Farm CSA

This is my first year with Helsing Junction Farm CSA. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I decided to give it a try anyway based on the photos shown when ordering. I purchased a full season, large share and a fruit share. After a false start, I received my first distribution on June 17, 2015. While not disappointed with the vegetable share, the fruit shared was very small. Definitely not worth the $ 20 per week being charged. Granted, it’s early in the season, but receiving only a half pint of blueberries and 2.5 pint of cherries was a bit disappointing. Hopefully, my experience will improve as the season goes on. If it does, I’ll adjust my rating accordingly.

We’ve been really pleased with our CSA share from Helsing this year and will sign up with them again next year if we’re still living in Olympia.
We tried a different CSA last year (there are four local organic CSA options that deliver to my husband’s workplace) and we much prefer Helsing. We like Helsing better because they have given us more variety, because we adore the fruit share, and because they have taken the time to provide good recipes.
We signed up for the mini share and are hard pressed to keep up with what we receive every week! There are the two of us and we’re vegetarians, yet we get so much from them every week that we can’t eat it all before the next batch arrives. We freeze, can, or give away extra, it’s that generous. The CSA we had last year from the different farm kept giving us the same things week after week – carrots, chard, potatoes – and we’re really pleased that Helsing has so much changing variety. Sometimes we have only received something for a week or two and wish we could be getting it for longer!
We LOVE the fruit share. Local organic fruit costs us high prices at the Oly farmer’s market, but with the fruit share we are getting a great deal. The first few weeks are a little slow when only berries are ready, but after that we get a ton of stone fruit that is delicious and much more bang for our buck than at the farmer’s market. For example, one week I was at the market and bought a container of cherries for about $ 15. A few days later my fruit share gave me the same amount of cherries plus several other pounds of fruit, all for $ 15 a week. Nice. We get peaches, nectarines, apples, berries, plums, pluots, etc etc
We have tried a number of their recipes, and have been impressed. Someone has put a lot of effort into finding recipes that only use the seasonal ingredients that are actually tasty. Everything has been good, and a few have been excellent, such as the recipe for fennel with honey, goat cheese, etc –it’s amazing. You can search their recipe database by ingredients. I appreciate that they never leave me hanging for ideas, since with every CSA you get exposed to both old and new ingredients and the recipe help is appreciated.

I have had a WONDERFUL experience using this CSA. I was a customer this past summer and a summer a few years back. The produce is delicious.
I love the weekly newsletters they send with updates on how things are going on the farm. I especially love the recipes they send each week that accompany the veggies in the box. Other CSAs I’ve belonged too don’t put as much effort in communication or recipes. But I’ve found them super helpful to introduce me to ways to prepare veggies I’m not as familiar with.
I’ve loved the fruit share, it can be hard to reliably get good organic fruit, if you can’t get to the farmers market each week, and I love knowing I’ve got that covered.
The donut peaches were absolutely devine.
I’ve gone down to visit the farm once as part of the open farm day, which was a blast. It feels good to really know where your food is coming from.
They do experiment with new varieties and some times these work out better than others from year to year. But they do a really good job of communicating this in their newsletters and it just helps to emphasize that the veggies are coming from a farm not a factory.

This has been my second year using HJ and I should say that their customer service level and the variety of produce has gone way down. I think they took on more customers than they could handle and it shows. While the produce has been grown locally, the variety is really poor. And although they claim that they give you more than you paid for, I would rather them sticking with the promised variety and content of your weekly box. Somehow, instead of radishes and other very good things, I would find fennel, for weeks! I would understand staples like potatoes, lettuce, onions… I made a mistake of signing up for large box, hoping for more variety, but it was just the same week after week. One more point: they offer fruit share. Ok, I signed up for that. When I saw that I would have 4 pounds of pluots (with their little note saying that those would keep in the fridge very nicely), I was very puzzled to see 6 pluots in the box. When I weighed them at home, it was 1 pound 12 ounces. Apples — instead of 2 pounds, I received 1 pound 9 ounces. And don’t you dare to complain. I just did and I received a very rude e-​mail saying that they were disheartened by my e-​mail and that they discontinued my membership and returned me the money for the left over weeks. Well, nothing shows a stressed-​out, pissed off woman better than that e-​mail. I thought I was in business with the farm, apparently CSA, in their opinion, has to come with their piece of mind too. No thanks, I am taking my money elsewhere.

Before writing this review I need to point out that I got CSA boxes in California for three years. I’m spoiled so take this all with a grain of salt.
Helsing Junction is a true local CSA, which is great. We tried the big CSA around here during the winter and it was essentially a Safeway organic produce department in a box (in other words, lots of mediocre out of season produce from Mexico), so HJ being all in-​season and locally grown is a big plus.
The downside is that they are small and no doubt very restricted by climate and geography as to what they can grow. The contents of the box change very slowly and rarely compare favorably to what you could get from specialty local farmers at farmer’s markets. I like that CSAs force you to use vegetables you might not normally use, but at HJ the lack of variety just means you’ll be sick of chard and tomatillos and dill after months of getting them practically every week.
Also worth mentioning the fruit. There’s not much, just a small crop of strawberries and another small one of Asian pears, neither very good (the strawberries were overripe and the pears flavorless). Pretty sad that there’s no stone fruit given how well it grows in this state.
The price is fine for the ample amount of produce you get. All in all we were content with the quality of HJ’s produce box but not really wowed at any point. If we were going to do a CSA again we would probably choose HJ. Instead we’re going to stick to going to the farmer’s market every week next year, where we expect to spend a similar amount but not be burdened with a pound of tomatillos or grocery store quality sandwich tomatoes every week for two months.