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Date: 8/8/2022
BRIMFIELD – With the cost of gas skyrocketing, frequent long lines at the grocery store and babies chewing on shopping cart handles, you may have opted to have your groceries delivered once or twice before. And, with Farmer at The Door, you can choose to have local, fresh, organic groceries delivered to you, too.
Farmer at The Door provides community-supported agriculture (CSA) boxes that are filled with local produce, eggs, meats, cheese, baked goods, artisan goods and homeopathic items such as soaps and detergents.
Members can receive these boxes weekly or go online and order individual items.
CSA is a system that connects producers and consumers within the food system by allowing the consumer to subscribe to the harvest of a certain farm or group of farms. According to Jessica Petrie-Cummings, owner & operator of Farmer at The Door, they have over 30 farms and small businesses that contribute goods.
Every Friday members are able to visit the Farmer at The Door website to choose what they want in their box. They can also opt to receive the automatic CSA boxes that are pre-filled with fresh, seasonal items.
The website closes every Monday morning and then all orders are sent to the farms and businesses to get supplies. By that same Friday, orders are packed up and delivered to each member’s doorstep.
According to Petrie-Cummings, the boxes are provided year-round. They contain different seasonal items and farms contribute various goods based on what they have been able to grow or make.
She said that it is a big team effort.
“Between all of us, we’re providing a longer season locally for these goods where normally they would have to be shipped up from California or Florida or somewhere warmer,” said Petrie-Cummings.
Petrie-Cummings started Brimfield’s Petrie Family Farm seven years ago.
After the end of her first year of business, the previous owner of Farmer at The Door approached her to see if she could grow produce for the boxes.
“What that did for me was create a regular paycheck every week for the farm, so I knew I could order more microgreen seeds, I could expand a little bit of fencing, whatever I needed to do, so it really helped our farm expand. I grew for her for five years until last November when she decided that she was going to move to New Hampshire, so I offered to buy the business,” she said.
Petrie-Cummings said that she knew it was important to carry on this business and support small farms.
“To me, it was so important to all these small farms because when you get started you don’t even know what to grow, you don’t know what people are going to want and there are 1,000 mistakes that happen… For me, it was about creating stability for the small farmers,” she said.
Since taking over the business, Petrie-Cummings said they have seen tremendous community support.
“I think a lot of people know about us at the Petrie Farm just because we’ve been in business for a while and we get out in the community quite a bit, so as soon as I bought it we went from 50 to 150 customers which was awesome,” she said. Anyone in the Farmer at The Door coverage area is able to sign up to become a member. A six-month trial membership is $40 and an annual VIP membership is $75.
“Anybody can go sign up for that and then they can go shop and buy item by item whatever they’d like. Or we do have packages like if you wanted a grilling package or a seafood package you could do that, but if you know that you’re the type of person who’s going to forget to order on the weekends, we have a lot of people that sign up for the automatic boxes,” said Petrie-Cummings.
The coverage area goes from Worcester to Belchertown and includes towns like Brimfield, Brookfield, Charlton, Holland, Palmer, Monson, Sturbridge, Ware and more.
A full list of towns can be found on the Farmer at The Door website.
Petrie-Cummings encouraged residents to try Farmer at The Door to eat more unique, seasonal foods.
“Sometimes you get things you’ve never heard of before, like a Kohlrabi, for instance. We just started some groups and recipe cards to help people know what to do with that stuff because if you’re going to eat locally, you need to eat seasonally,” said Petrie-Cummings.
She said that she is trying to help residents “eat with the seasons.”
“So many people are used to going to the store and getting strawberries every single week, but you can’t do that if you’re going to eat locally. They’re only here for three or four weeks a year, but then next up there’s currant berries and gooseberries and all these things that people don’t know how to eat, so we’re trying to help them learn how,” she said.
Farmer at The Door also helps continue to provide stability and income for small businesses in the area.
“These guys need regular orders. You put so much effort into having a small business and then you sit there and wait for people to call you. So, in this case, every Monday they’re getting an order from me and they end up being pretty regular because we have I think 35-45 people who order every single week from us,” said Petrie-Cummings.
Farmer at The Door is a convenient, easy, fresh and local option for anyone to try.
“People don’t have time to go from farm to farm to farm to get what they need, so this fixes that problem for them and it’s all better for your health. Everything’s organic or naturally grown,” said Petrie-Cummings.
Those interested in learning more about Farmer at The Door are encouraged to visit their website at https://www.farmeratthedoor.com/.