Farmers' Co-op

Over a year ago, I chatted with another mom at a play group about a local farmers' co-op. She told me that her family has a box of locally-grown, seasonal produce delivered to them every week. She was excited about how fresh and delicious the fruit and vegetables were compared to grocery store produce. I also remember her sharing that she and her husband felt very good about supporting local farmers, both for economic and environmental reasons. I liked and agreed with everything she said, but it took an additional push to get me into action :)

A few weeks ago, a friend told me that I needed to watch this documentary called Food, Inc. After that, another friend blogged about the same video, so I took the double hint and watched it. It was very, very informative, and seriously made me want to become a vegetarian. Unfortunately, my husband likes meat too much for me to bring vegetarianism to the whole family, but I resolved to further reduce the meat and processed foods that we eat, in favor of more fresh produce and whole grain foods. And this is about the time that I remembered my conversation from a year ago and started checking out farmers' co-ops.

The one I settled on for now is called Grow Alabama. This co-op does weekly deliveries, and they allow customers to customize what they get from the produce that is available that week. For example, if Grow Alabama offers 10 specific fruits and veggies next week, I can decline the ones that I don't want and get double orders of the ones my family prefers. I signed us up for the biggest weekly produce plan, and we got our first box this afternoon. In case you don't already know this, I am really just a little girl in a grown-up body, and I was giddy with excitement as I sorted through all my fresh veggies. Here's what I found: two grapefruit, eight tangerines, six carrots, two turnips, two huge zucchini, four bulb onions, a bunch of asparagus, a head of broccoli, 20+ mushrooms, and ten sweet potatoes. The price for all of this was $35.15. I haven't added it all up, but just eyeballing it, I think that is a bit less than I would pay at the grocery store for the same fresh produce. But even if it is not less, the quality of the produce is definitely superior, and I wouldn't mind paying a little more for the economic and ecological benefits, either.

And on top of everything else, getting so many fruits and vegetables automatically each week will help motivate me to keep us eating healthier. If this produce thing keeps going well, I may start buying my eggs and milk from a co-op as well. And if we ever get a deep freezer in the garage, I would love to occasionally buy free range, organic meat (which is advertised sometimes on the Grow Alabama site), when money allows.

So the moral of this post is, don't watch Food, Inc., unless you are ready to change the way your family eats!