community supported agriculture

a.k.a. farm shares.  i like the idea a lot.  basically you pony up in advance for a share of the harvest of a farm and get a pile of food once a week.  the idea being the farmers have more reliable income, not subject to changes in market prices and not at the mercy of weather, and you get local, fresh food for roughly the same price you would pay at the grocery store since there's no middle man.  seems like a winning proposition for everyone involved (you, the farmer, the animals, and the environment), right?

i've toyed with the idea of joining one on and off for the last year and a half or so.  there was one CSA that actually had a pick-up location on my way home from work which would have been fantastic.  unfortunately, they don't seem to be operating this year.  most of the other's are way out of the way for my wife and i, or have pickups at weird hours that we'd never be able to get to like tuesday mornings from 10am to 10:30am, in belize.  there is *one* however that delivers directly to your home which had me pretty excited until i looked at the prices.

basic two person share for 10 weeks of produce - $410.  that's $41 of produce per week.  even if i went to the most expensive grocery store and bought all organic stuff i'd still have a hard time buying $40 worth of produce.  the weekly boxes from this CSA typically include one or two vegetables you could actually make a meal out of and the rest are things like onions, radishes, leafy greens, etc.  not the most cost effective.

half dozen eggs each week for 10 weeks, $75, or in terns more easily compared to grocery store prices, $15 per dozen.  now laura and i have spent countless hours in the egg section of harris teeter staring at the egg section trying to decide which eggs to buy.  there's cage free eggs, organic eggs, free range eggs, brown eggs, white eggs, natural nest eggs and every permutation of the aforementioned attributes.  being unable to decide eggs were the most politically / environmentally correct eggs, we just assumed that it was the most expensive ones they had at about $4 per dozen and bought those.

two 1/2 gallon bottles of organic milk every week for 10 weeks... $250.  yes, that is $25/gallon of milk.  that one pretty much speaks for itself.  if you sign up for only 5 weeks of milk, the price goes to $30/gallon.

i hate to dissuade anyone from joining one of these though because i think it's such a great idea.  most other CSAs cost about half as much as this one, not all have eggs or milk.  so if you don't live in the boonies like me and laura, look into it.  most of them cost about half of what this particular farm charges.  here's where you can get started.  http://www.localharvest.org/csa/