Mid-Season Survey Response, Summer 2013

As we approach the seventh week of the program, we are taking time to consider all of the feedback offered in our mid-season survey and would like to share some of your thoughts and ours.

To begin, thank you to everyone who filled out our survey! We appreciate the time and thought put into each response. We will do our best to incorporate your suggestions not only for the rest of this season, but in future seasons as well. If there is anything you forgot to say, be sure to check out our suggestions box, which is out at every market day.

Going through the survey responses, something becomes apparent which seems pretty obvious on the surface- people like different things. While some responses called for more cooking greens, others said they were swimming in swiss chard. Every item that appeared on the least favorite list also appeared on the favorite items list. In total, lettuce received 43 votes as a favorite item and 40 votes as a least favorite item- a surprisingly close number of drastically different opinions. When making purchasing choices, we try to get a wide variety of items so we are not neglecting someone’s favorite, and so we are not swamping someone else with their culinary nemesis. We did hear your calls for more fruit, and will work to do this in the upcoming weeks. We hope you enjoy the peaches-first of the season!

We also hear your calls for less lettuce- Although you’ll see it in this week’s share, we will work to bring you heartier items as well (and be sure to check out this week’s spotlight for some more lettuce ideas!). As coordinators, one of our favorite parts of the program is the partnerships we build with farmers. An important part of this partnership is committing to farmers for the whole season, even if the season is hard. Between weather and pests, the summer season has been slower than anticipated for our farmers, with lettuce being the most consistent crop. Buying lettuce early in the summer was a way for us to support our farmers, and now, as the summer season does start to pick up and our farmers recover, we can reap the benefits!

Here are two charts depicting responses from our shareholders regarding their favorite items and least favorite items. The first shows the actual numbers of votes for favorite/least favorite. The second shows the percentage of favorite to least favorite out of the total number of votes.