I've set a goal for next year: buy food grown as close to me as possible, as cheaply as possible. And quit it with all the fast food! I'm 25 and experiencing digestive turmoils already – I blame my bad habits. This is the first of a series of posts I'll do about how and why this works for me, this one focusing on costs.
The advantages of buying fresh, local food mean more than nutrition, environmental responsibility, and economic support for family farmers. It also means that I know the kinds of seeds farmers are planting. There is a difference! Some seeds were selectively bred and/or genetically modified to enhance yield, often at the expense of flavor. I have no fear of what genetically modified crops might do to my health, and am proud to have graduated from the same school (UMN Twin Cities) that Norman Borlaug did. He went on there to develop disease-resistant high-yielding crops that he sent across the world, preventing a billion people from starving. I've never tried Borlaug's wheat (that I know of), but I bet there are varieties that taste better.
I recently learned from the PBS TV show Mind of a Chef that there is an old tradition called seed saving which results in heirloom vegetables. (Oh, so that's where they come from!). These vegetables are prized for their flavors, textures, and appearances; in fact those are the characteristics they were bred for throughout tradition. Seeing a regional (they were in the South) custom, from family to family, practiced out of respect for the land they tilled and the food they ate, made me wish that my family had some kind of a tradition like that.
Find out what's happening in Woodburywith free, real-time updates from Patch.
How to get it at home: Suppliers and CSAs
Fortunately, I can benefit from all those years of tradition by picking up some of Minnesota's heirloom seeds and vegetables, and there are people around here who grow them. In addition, because the meat, eggs, and dairy you can get are free-range and fresh, there's flour that's milled fresh on order from heirloom varieties, the produce is fresh (some even year-round!) oats are plentiful and our rice is, well, wild, you can keep a fully-stocked, extremely flavorful and nutritious fridge without leaving the state. Find you suppliers like I did, with the MN Department of Agriculture's MN Grown online search tool.
The most economical option, making sure you've got fridge and freezer space for everything, is the CSA (community-supported agriculture) share. Many farms around Minnesota offer these; all you've got to do is apply and if they've got a share available you can buy it (up-front or payment plan). The food comes biweekly or monthly, over the course of a few months, delivered to a designated pickup location. No CSA I have found provides all the foods I tend to buy, but I have found a few that, together, will let me get started in January despite the cold.
Find out what's happening in Woodburywith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Braucher's Sunshine Harvest Farm in Webster, MN offers a meat CSA share where you can buy 40 pounds of meat and eggs (two dozen eggs, two frozen chickens, frozen ground beef, sausages, roasts, steaks, bacon) every month for 4 or 6 months. A half share would provide 20 pounds of the same items. The full share costs $495 for four months and $695 for six months; the half-share costs $260 for four months and $360 for four months.
Woodbury is situated very close to a prime example of innovative farming techniques. The people at Garden Fresh Farms in Maplewood have devised a system that allows them to produce fresh vegetables and fish using a system called aquaponics, indoors, year-round! They have a variety of 20-week CSA programs, prices for which I will factor into a price comparison at article's end. However, they do have a limited selection.
To keep all my favorite local veggies stocked this winter, I ordered the Ploughshare Farm (Parkers Prairie, MN) Frozen Winter half share, which consists of frozen summer vegetables in half-pound packs. The closest drop site to Woodbury is at a church on Dayton Avenue in St. Paul. These farmers are really getting recognized for their forward-thinking and common-sense practices, and I'll be signing up for their next available share for sure.
As for dairy, Autumnwood Farm in Forest Lake, MN sells milk at Cub Foods in Woodbury! If you want butter, though, you might need some of their half-and-half and a churner; for yogurt, some culture. Eichten's in Center City does make Gouda cheese, however.
Finally, if I'm getting bread from Garden Fresh Farms, I can make my own fresh pasta and tortillas with flour I get from Good Earth Mills in Good Thunder, MN. They sell heirloom wheat called Red Fife at $50 for a 20 pound bag of flour, along with hot breakfast cereals and other products.
The costs and caveats: Cheap food takes time
Time to add it all up! I figure that for my girlfriend, my brother, and I, the following will suffice:
A 6 month full meat share at Sunshine Harvest Farms, 240 pounds of eggs and meat, costs $695. A 20-week Greens and Grains plus Protein share from Garden Fresh Farms costs $600. If I estimate 1 gallon of Autumnwood Farms milk to cost $5 and a 2-gallon per week intake, in 6 months that'll be $260. Finally, if we use up a 20 pound bag of flour in a month, after 6 months that's $300. Which brings my rough total to $1855. That's not including oil, vinegar, and spices, but I'll have lots of fresh herbs!
The USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion reports data on food costs. Its October 2013 “moderate cost plan” figure for men aged 19 to 50 was $297.80, and for women of that age range it was $254.50. So for all three of us to eat for a month, they say it would cost $850.10. For six months, $5,100.60! According to them, it costs me a little under ten dollars a day to eat. I'm not a meticulous budget-keeper so I don't know exactly, but that sounds right, as long as I don't eat out.
Already, though, I can see that my plan needs fine-tuning. Space will be an issue, and I'll need to get some new kitchen equipment to do all of this scratch cooking. I might have to make a few trips to a co-op for some ingredients. But I think, so far, I'm on my way to my goal of cooking with local food on a budget.
Check back soon for the next article in this series, where I'll estimate what kind of a time commitment I'm getting myself into, and take a look at some of the peripheral costs.
