I don't know if they go by the same name elsewhere, but in my city we have a variety of programs that are dedicated specifically to purchasing produce straight from farmers. They're similar to a farmer's market in some respect, but the twist is that you place an order and then receive a place where you go to pick up your food each week. (In our case it was a house a few blocks away. A bit awkward, but there you go.) We don't get the boxes of food anymore, mainly because our distributor was so incompetent, but the idea of a box of fresh veggies for a fairly low price remains good. Anybody got something similar near their house? What's your experience?
They do have something like this here in the next county. I know because I talked to the woman, and wrote an article on it. It is a bit like a food coop. I have never ordered anything from them though, because the prices seem kind of high. I just think that there are better values out there. I would pick a farmers market over the COOP or food share idea.
We don't have something like that here. But it's easy to buy fresh produce from farmers [in season] at ridiculously low prices. Almost all year round we'll get better prices on produce because ours is a farming community and the farmers grow different crops so except for some vegetables and fruits which don't grow here, we can get anything else we want straight from the farmers or at the local farmers market.
This is a totally new concept for me! It certainly sounds very interesting, but the closest thing we have to it are the farmer's markets. I hear they're very good, but I've yet to go as they're out in the sticks and I don't drive So we just settle for supermarket stuff, which isn't always the best!
I'm sure it depends on the food share. I've seen them fluctuate in price quite a bit. The one we used was $15 for, like, two weeks' worth of vegetables, based on how often we incorporate them into our meals. You could spend more if you wanted organic stuff, but we never bothered. The primary downside was the fact that you couldn't choose what you got in your box each time, but we took that as an opportunity to try different veggies that we would never buy in a store. Resulted in some... interesting... dishes.
I was looking around for Angel Food Ministries (no longer in business) a while back, and came across a program like the one you described. I would love to sign up for it, but my vehicle's not in the greatest shape, and I'd have to drive a few towns over to pick up the produce, which doesn't work for me. I'm keeping it in the back of my mind for whenever I'm able to drive more, though, because it sounds like a good program. I actually started aLog In about it several months back, and it has a link to the site in case anyone's interested. I believe it's throughout the United States, but I'm not sure if it is outside of the USA.
