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Great Country Farms

Community Supported Agriculture, CSA, Produce Farm, U-Pick, Field Trips in Loudoun County, VA

Farm Market & Play Area

Open Daily 9am-5pm
Advance Regular Tix Admission: $10/Child; $12/Adult
Gate Admission: $12/Child; $14/Adult
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Our Pledge, Your Pledge

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Our Pledge to You~Updated  5/28/2021Farmhand driving the tractor at Great Country Farms

  1. Our Farmhands are trained in CDC guidelines for hand washing and sanitizing and and everyone who handles food — in the field, in the packing barn, or in the market.
  2. Our team is educated on CDC Mask guidelines and understand the privacy of our team and guests is of utmost importance.  
  3. All Farmhands certify that they are  temperature and symptom free before each shift.
  4. Frequently touched surfaces are sanitized regularly during operation.
  5. We will provide hand sanitizing options before entering the field for our farmhands and PYO guests.
  6. We will provide new containers for pick-your-own for guests.
  7.  Our CSA Farm Shares will be packed in single-use liner bags, which will be sealed with tamper-evident tape. That way, members can be sure their food has been touched by only the picker and the packer.

Your Pledge to UsTwo young girls with lovely braids hold their pick your own box between them while awaiting the Great Country Farms tractor ride to the apple orchard.

  1. CDC guidelines protect you, as well as our other patrons and employees, and you agree to take responsibility for understanding and following the new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  while visiting the farm.
  2.  If you are sick, have been exposed to COVID-19 in the past 14 days, or have symptoms of COVID-19 (including a fever, cough, or shortness of breath), you will stay at home and will not enter the Farm Market or PYO Fields.
  3. For PYO Reservations and Advance Tickets,  you agree to arrive on time and complete your visit within your ticket window.
  4. You agree to wash/sanitize your hands and assist your children in doing so prior to and after picking produce and frequently while visiting the play area.
  5. You agree to not sample any fruit in the field to comply with the guidelines from the Virginia Department of Agriculture.

 

 

 

CSA Delivery Days 2020

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Basket with onions, kale, strawberries, and a GCF refrigerator magnetCSA 2020 starts Tuesday, June 2. This year will differ from previous years in many ways. The first big difference is that your customized share will have a label with your name on it. If you pick up your share at a group site, you must find the box with your name.

If your group site is hosted in a private home, we recommend you provide a cooler with ice packs to receive your share. The cooler must be large enough to close properly with a bin measuring 19 by 13 by 10 inches inside, and it must be clearly labelled with your name.  The cooler should be delivered to your group site before 9:00 a.m. on your delivery day and retrieved within the guideline set by the host. Your host is not permitted to keep your share overnight; you must claim it on delivery day. If you know that you will be able to retrieve your share within 15 minutes of delivery notification, you might decide to manage without a cooler.  If you cannot pick up on your delivery day, please make a vacation request to put off your delivery that week.

These group sites will receive their shares on Wednesdays: Clifton Townes, Wellness Connection, Latimer Group (formerly McNerney), Great Harvest Vienna, Hutchings Group, Mirra Group, Sonak Family Chiropractic, Romaezi Group, Lansdowne Group, Leesburg Chiropractic, Swenson Group, Reston Group.

These group sites will receive their shares on Thursdays: Olio2go, Herzfeld Group, Montana Street Group, Caputo Group, Arlington/Lyon Village Group, Moomaw Group, Huntington Forest Group, McClure Group, Bishop Group, Hamaker Group, Fontana Group, Musci Group.

These group sites will receive their shares on Fridays: Great Harvest Herndon, Great Harvest Ashburn, Wine’ing Butcher, Broadlands Group.

Farm Pick-up~ please pick up on your scheduled pick up day

If you’re picking up your share at the farm, you must do so on the day you chose when you bought your share as we will be printing customized packing lists weekly based on your preferences. We’ll give you a customized packing list when you arrive. If you don’t remember your day, you can log into your account and check your member profile.  Most pick-up members have chosen to come into the market to pack their own box, and you are welcome to do that, following the COVID-19 guidelines noted below.   We  are also happy to pre-pack your custom box for you and bring it to your car for curbside pick up.  If you’d like to have us to pack your box, the service charge is $51 for the whole season.  If you do prefer curbside pick up, please email CSA@greatcountryfarms.com so we can add that service to your account and ensure a smooth pick up experience next week.

Home Delivery

If you purchased a home delivery share, your deliveries will arrive every Wednesday, beginning June 3.  If you will not be home to receive your delivery, we recommend you provide a cooler with ice packs to receive your share. The cooler must be large enough to close properly with a bin measuring 19 by 13 by 10 inches inside with the ice packs, and it must be clearly labelled with permission for our delivery driver to place your harvest box inside the cooler.  If you have special delivery direction for our drivers, please email CSA@GreatCountryFarms.com so we can add those notes to guide our driver at your home.

COVID-19 Precautions

We will be following the guidelines from the Virginia Departments of Health for Phase 1 Reopening and Agriculture for Pick your Own Farms and Individual Markets   

Our Pledge to YouFarmhand driving the tractor at Great Country Farms

  1. Our Farmhands are trained in CDC guidelines for hand washing and sanitizing and and everyone who handles food — in the field, in the packing barn, or in the market — will wear gloves  when working with food.
  2. When social distancing is not an option and in our buildings, our team will wear a face covering.
  3. All Farmhands are symptom and temperature checked before each shift.
  4. Frequently touched surfaces are sanitized hourly during operation.
  5. We will support social distancing by offering pick-your-own by appointment. These appointments will be available online in the evening, with CSA and Fan Members given first opportunity to schedule appointments.
  6. We will provide hand washing/sanitizing options before entering the field for our farmhands and PYO guests.
  7. Will will provide new containers for pick-your-own to ensure a single use for safety.
  8. Social Distancing will be strictly enforced.  We will separate pick your own groups in the field by assigning a PYO area for your reservation time.
  9.  Our CSA Farm Shares will be packed in single-use liner bags, which will be sealed with tamper-evident tape. That way, members can be sure their food has been touched by only the picker and the packer.

Your Pledge to UsTwo young girls with lovely braids hold their pick your own box between them while awaiting the Great Country Farms tractor ride to the apple orchard.

  1. Social distancing and sanitation guidelines protect you, as well as our other patrons and employees, and you agree to take responsibility for social distancing your family from other groups while visiting.
  2.  If you are sick, have been exposed to COVID-19 in the past 14 days, or have symptoms of COVID-19 (including a fever, cough, or shortness of breath), you will stay at home and will not enter the Farm Market or PYO Fields.
  3. You will heed VA. Governor Northam’s Mask Mandate and wear a face covering inside our buildings.
  4. Pick your own will be by appointment and you agree to arrive on time and complete your picking within your reservation time.
  5. You will wash/sanitize your hands and assist your children in doing so prior to and after picking/packing produce.
  6. You agree to not sample any fruit in the field to comply with the guidelines from the Virginia Department of Agriculture.

 

 

 

No-Till Saves Time

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In the last post, we talked about switching to no-till in order to preserve the soil’s micro-biome, which is crucial for bringing crops to their full nutritional capacity. This post focuses on another reason not to till: weeds.

If you’ve ever grown a garden yourself, you’ve probably found that when you come out with your seeds in the spring, your garden plot is covered with debris, including plants you didn’t put there. The easiest way to get rid of that mess is to rent a Roto-tiller, which turns the surface of the soil under and brings a lower layer to the top. It looks great: loose and clean and ready for your spinach seeds. But three weeks later, your row of spinach is engulfed by thousands of invaders. Where did they come from? You planted spinach, not chickweed!

They came from that lower layer, which is full of dormant seeds that pop to life when you turn the soil and expose them to the warmth of the sun.

That same process takes place on a much larger scale when you till a 40-acre field with a tractor. Industrial farming solves the problem by spraying the field with Round-up, which kills everything but plants genetically engineered to tolerate it. Well, we don’t use Round-up, so we had to pull those weeds by hand, which takes a long time.

But when we stopped tilling the soil, we stopped bringing those seeds to the surface, so they stopped germinating.

There’s a trade-off: it’s hard to sow seeds directly onto un-tilled soil because of all that debris, including left-over weeds. So instead of turning under that debris, we cover it with compost. After a couple of years, most of the weed seeds are pretty well buried. And as long as we don’t turn over the soil, they stay that way.

Why No-Till Planting?

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Regenerative agriculture is a way of farming that fosters the health of our ecosystem in this moment, while also building toward a healthy future. This approach has many components, one of which we instituted last year: no-till planting. That means that instead of preparing the fields for seed by overturning the soil from a depth of six to eight inches below the surface, we’re leaving the soil intact and transplanting seedlings from the greenhouse directly into undisturbed topsoil.

One of the benefits of no-till planting is that it dramatically reduces erosion. It takes a long time to create topsoil — countless centuries of cyclical growth and decay — and scientists estimate that 23 billion tons of that precious commodity are washed into rivers, lakes, and oceans every year. At that rate, it will be gone completely in four or five generations. The primary cause of so much soil loss is industrial plowing, because loose soil is carried away by water, whereas undisturbed soil is like a great big sponge.

So one of the reasons we’ve stopped tilling our soil is to keep it on our fields, where it can grow delicious, life-giving food for many years to come. Next week we’ll talk about another reason: preserving the soil’s ecosystem.

Custom CSA

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This change is a big deal.  It means far less wasted food, both for you and for us. It means you can eliminate unwanted items from your box, and add extras if you like.  It means we can add some unusual crops to our growing plan, knowing that people who want them will get them.  It means you have an easy way to buy surplus items in bulk, and we have an easy way to sell surplus items.

It’s a big deal.

Here’s what’s different:

  1. This new system will show you the weekly price, even though you’re buying a seasonal share, and the base price shown is for market-style farm pick-up. If you want join a group site, you’ll be invited to do so after choosing your share, and the delivery charge will be added automatically.
  2. We’ve reinstated home delivery, with two different pricing zones.
  3. When you sign up, you’ll be asked to set your preference level on every item we offer. Then each week you’ll get a chance to adjust your customized box contents.
  4. At group sites, you’ll have to find the box with your label on it. In the market, we’ll give you a customized list, and you’ll pack your box accordingly.
  5. If you use the installment plan, you’ll be charged 25% of your share price at sign-up, another 25% on the day of first pick-up, and the remaining 50% on a weekly basis throughout the season. Any extras you choose will be added to your weekly charge. You may choose to pay in full at sign-up, in which case you would see a weekly charge only if you add something to your box.

The new system is quite user-friendly, and there’s a lot of support available. We think it’s going to be a whole new world of great local food.

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