Saturday, November 8, 2008

Nature's Bounty

Our canned goods share came today.

We got apple pie mix, apple sauce, blueberry apple sauce, dilly beans, pickles, pears, peaches, cranberry sauce, salsa, tomato juice, stewed tomatoes, carrots, lots of jam, asparagus and peach chutney. It was great to have all that canned goodness delivered right to our doorstep.

It was over $300 though, thank gods we paid for it back in spring when we were rolling in money. It almost makes me sick to think that we shelled out all that money for the canned goods, as well and a few hundred for our veggie share, just as much for 1/2 a pig and way too much money for having all of our dairy products delivered to our door.

I love that we have been able to bypass the middleman and buy directly from the farms, we supported 4 farms this year with upfront payments to help them out with the costs at the start of the season. But we just can't afford to do it again next year. I will have to do canning, which will cost about $1 per jar, rather than the almost $10 per jar to pay someone else to do it. We will have to buy milk, cheese and yogurt from the store, where they are about half the cost when compared to buying from the dairy. I think we will continue to buy meat from the farm though. I just can't bring myself to condone factory farming. Rather than paying for a crop share up front, I think we will buy all of our veggies from the various farmer's markets. It's still supporting the farmers, just on the back end. We found that there were times we just didn't want to eat the veggies we were given in that week. When we buy exactly what we want, there is less waste, and that's a good thing too.

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