Such chores can be turned into social events, allowing members of the community to come together to visit with and entertain one another. You might offer shareholders a choice of summer, winter or full-season shares. This allows home gardeners, for example, to supplement home-grown produce with a winter share of storage crops. Some CSA projects grow a certain amount of each crop to fulfill the requirements for pre-sold shares, with surplus sold through either wholesale or direct marketing outlets such as farmers' markets. Other projects determine approximate share per family by taking the total daily harvest and dividing it by the number of shares and marking the totals on a blackboard.
Shareholders then weigh and pack their own produce according to their shares.
A surplus table is provided where people can put back what they don't want. Other customers may pick items they can use, or the surplus left may be donated to a soup kitchen or convalescent home. If it's not practical for consumers to come to the farm to pick up their shares of produce, one or more drop-off points can be arranged, such as a church or community center. Other projects simply take all the produce to a distribution shed and let people take what they need. People are considerate of each other and usually the problem is that people don't take enough.