Just the Facts, Ma’am

The numbers are in from Drumlin’s Winter CSA:

Cost of farmshare vegetables for the season: $400
If you helped with the farm work: $300
Broken down by week: $20
Pounds of food per week: 22
What it would have cost at the store: $516
Total money saved: $216
Having your heart broken by the local farmer: Priceless.

Comments

[April in CT]

I'm so glad you posted this! I had been wondering what the price breakdown is of doing a farm share. I hope one day we can get signed up with one, but I fear so much would go to waste with it just being two of us. I might be like a deer caught in the headlights!

[Jess]

April: Find a friend (esp a vegetarian one) to split the share! My summer CSA share is split in two: half to me and my housemate, half to a veggie friend. Works for us!

Now, I just have to find a winter CSA in the DC area!

[melissa]

I just clicked over to your twitter page. people always surprise me with their appearance. you don't look like what I thought, I pictured you as blonde. huh.

I wondered about getting on twitter... but I am already overwhelmed most days; it would probably drive me batty.

[Tammy]

Melissa: Blonde? Really? Cool. As for Twitter, I remain lukewarm. It can be fun sometimes, I'll admit, but mostly it just seems like a lot of distracting background noise.

Jess: I hope you can find one!

April: Everyone is overwhelmed the first time, it's just part of the experience. Jess is right, sharing might be a good way to start. The prices vary, obviously. For the summer share, I think we paid more like $30 a week. If you're looking for a CSA, you can type your zip code here and it will map them out for you:

http://www.localharvest.org/

[Robert]

Did you ever end up eating all those carrots? I think you have to factor in the effect of all the overwhelming quantities of vegetables you might not otherwise purchase if you were buying them in smaller batches at the store. Problem is, I'm not sure if that would raise or decrease the savings.

On the one hand, unless you are a die-hard vegetarian, you might not have actually purchased 22 pounds of veggies a week at the store, and if you ended up having to throw out any of those carrots you might need to back them out of the number. On the other hand, if you were so busy coming up with creative ways to cook and eat all those winter vegetables you may well have decreased your normal consumption of higher-priced items like beef and HoHos, so your savings might actually be considerably higher than $216.

Math's hard.

[Tammy]

Robert: Good points, all. In fact, I did end up using all but two pounds of the carrots, which thankfully got limp before I could force-feed them to myself. So I stuck them in the freezer for future stock. There was some waste over the course of the season, though. I can't deny that.

But, yes, I would never in a million years have bought 22 lbs. of vegetables at the store, if left to my own devices. I think my vegetable intake has increased 4 million percent since I joined the farm. We did end up eating less meat, and less crap, for sure. Our groceries bills seemed to go down in the beginning, and then somehow, we compensated by buying more... of what? I have no idea.

Anyway, one of these summer months, I'm going to keep track of the money and see just how cheaply we can eat. The family's going to love that!