CSA review
First a quick Q&A:
- Will we sign up with the CSA again? Yes
- What did it cost up front to sign up? $325
- What would the food have cost in the grocery store? about $440
- How did the food compare? Mostly better. When an item was bad - it was really bad.
- How many bad items were there? 3 - A head of lettuce, a tomato, and an ear of corn.
- How were store prices determined? Taken from New Seasons market web-site each week.
- If you have other questions, just let me know and I will update this section as best I can.
Now on to the review:
While getting a bit of a bargain on the price of the overall price of the produce was nice, this is not the reason why we would sign up again. Actually there are two main reasons why we would sign up again: being forced to deal with the seasonality of the produce was fun and we like the idea of directly supporting a farm. The added benefit of the produce being grown w/o pesticides, getting varieties that do not show up in the regular market, and saving a little bit of money (though that is not guarranteed) are just bonuses.
Not being big summer squash, cucumber, and zucchini eaters we did have quite a few items that we did not (or could not because of my allergies) use. These items were donated to our local food bank. This cut into the savings a bit, but not so much that the CSA ended up costing more than purchasing the same items from the market.
As I mentioned before, the most fun was dealing with whatever came in from the farm each week. A couple of times it got to be a bit of a burden, like the fifth week of rhubarb or the huge head of cabbage at the end of the season, but being flexible and making good use of the freezer made it so we could utilize almost all of the items we received from the farm.