COVID-19 Response

Responding To COVID-19

What Ironwood is doing to ensure safety and health during this pandemic

Ironwood Farm’s Protocols for COVID-19

Dear Community,

We are thinking of you all.

Ironwood Farm uses a rigorous food safety standard. THE COVID-19 situation has propelled us to make even more intense and safe standards of practice to protect our customers and staff. We feel it important to share with you what Ironwood Farm is doing in response to this new environment of risk.

This is a difficult time when we are thoughtfully putting distance between ourselves and you, the friends and customers we love, in order to protect everyone. We are taking safe distancing measures and increasing sanitation in order to provide an essential service of growing food for the community. Although our interactions are distanced and short, please know that this food is grown and packed with SUPREME LOVE. Thank you for reading up on the protocols we are following and how you can participate. This will help keep us all doing what we love to do, and providing beautiful vegetables and herbs for our local food system!

If you have ever considered signing up for a CSA, this is the year to do it! We are currently evaluating CSA distribution steps we will take to ensure everyone’s safety. This will likely involve us serving food with washed and gloved hands, or an open air pick up system. Any returned boxes will remain in a holding area for four days before they are used again.

While we love visitors, we currently ask folks who are not working with us, picking up their food or delivering supplies not to visit at this time. If you are coming for a pick up or delivery, we ask you to be brief. We will send you love beams from a 6 foot + distance!

Steps We are Taking On-Farm

  • 6 foot distancing whenever possible
  • Hand washing protocol when entering, leaving, and during work in alignment with CDC Hand washing Guidance
  • Sanitation protocol and schedule of facilities in compliance with New York State recommendations for food based essential businesses
  • Delivery protocol which keeps us and our employees safe, where employees only touch our boxes and truck
  • Regular sanitation of cooler door handles, and implementation of pre-order and pick up sales.
  • Wearing gloves during harvest and processing/packing
  • Wearing masks during harvest and processing/packing, and when greeting any farm customers or accepting deliveries (we will continue to do this during harvest/pack up to the point where it becomes too hot, and could jeopardize the safety of our crew)
  • Employees have access to paid sick leave in the event they become sick

Steps We are Following Outside of the Farm

As an essential business during a pandemic, we consider it our top priority to keep ourselves safe in order to best keep our customers and community safe. All team members working at Ironwood Farm have made this agreement. We are taking the following precautions, even when we aren’t working, to provide stable jobs to our team and to produce the most nourishing and safest food we can:
  • We aren’t spending time with anyone outside of who we live with, beyond passing interactions at 6 foot distance, outside in open air. When we meet up for brief interactions to check in with friends, we stand outside in open air 6 feet away. To our understanding even this type of outside meet up has been asked to cease by Governor Cuomo for anything more than a few minutes.
  1. Notify our doctor and follow their guidelines, including testing if possible 
  2. Notify a manager via email at farmers@ironwood.farm
  3. Stay home from work if we are exhibiting symptoms or undergoing testing, until a negative test result is revealed
  4. If you are are not showing symptoms but we have come in contact with someone who is being tested for COVID-19, but has not been confirmed to be positive yet, we will remain home until the results of the test are known
  5. We are extending paid time off to 14 days, in the event that a team member is sick and/or in a quarantine situation and needs to stay home
  • We use caution when we are out and about (gas stations, grocery stores). Eg: Hand sanitize after touching any handles, avoid touching our face, follow CDC Self Protection guidelines.
  • Sleeping enough, eating, taking care of ourselves!

New Delivery Protocols

For all of our deliveries, we are following the following protocols and request that your staff, if we are delivering to you, respect them in collaboration with us:
  • Please ask staff at delivery locations to keep a 6’ minimum distance from our driving team member
  • If you have a delivery warehouse: please put a pallet down, or leave one nearby, and our Ironwood driver will exit the truck, open the truck and place the boxes on the pallet.
  • If we usually open the door to your store, we will knock and ask that you open the door to accept your delivery. Interactions will be brief.
  • It is very important to keep our Ironwood staff members separate from the staff at delivery locations at this time, and for teams employed at delivery locations not to touch our truck, and our team not to touch anything in your space. Thank you for helping us work as a community team in regards to this virus.
  • Lauren Jones is the manager responsible for COVID-19 procedures: direct any questions to her at farmers@ironwood.farm

On-Farm Pick Ups from Our Cooler

For all on-farm pick-ups we are following these protocols and request that when you pick up from our cooler for yourself, your business or your employer, you respect them in collaboration with us:
  • Please wash your hands before you leave your house or place of business to drive to our farm
  • When you arrive at our cooler, we ask ALL FOLKS picking up to use our hand sanitizer. Please pick up the sanitizer bottle (soon we will have a sanitizer box set up attached to the cooler), squeeze it into your hand, put the bottle down, then sanitize. This will ensure the utmost safety before you enter the cooler.
  • Open the cooler door with sanitized hands and please only touch your own labeled parcel(s) of food
  • Close the door by leaning into it with your shoulder until it is completely shut
Share by: