CSA, Farmers Market or Weekly Food Delivery Service: What's Your Preference?

Posted on March 28, 2013 at 10:48 am

The season for fresh, regional, spring food is upon us. With April comes the promise of spring time greens like mesclun, asparagus, spring peas and the first herbs of the season. Not too far behind are early season berries and we can almost smell the peaches of summer. 

With this new agricultural season upon us, we turn our gaze towards our suppliers of fresh regional food. For some of us, this means the grocery store, and for others, it means farm stands. Between these two options, there are a number of other choices that consumers can consider. 

Farmers Markets are one of the most popular options. These gatherings of local and regional farmers and producers offer a wide variety of items to choose from. These gatherings are a great place to get ideas for your weekly meals. You can mix and match, find your proteins, breads and fresh fruits and veggies all in one place. The Maryland Department of Agriculture offers a fabulous website with a listing of all the markets in the area. That can be found here: www.marylandsbest.net

CSA's, or Community Supported Agriculture, is another option. When signing up for a CSA, the customer commits to receive a summer's worth of produce items (sometimes meat, bread, eggs and other dairy are included) from an individual farm.  Joining a CSA provides the customer with an opportunity to support the farm in a direct way, while enjoying the produce that the farm can grow and supply over a season. 

A third option is a food delivery service. You may be familiar with those delivery services associated with big chain grocery stores. For those of you looking for a more regional and traceable option, a new wave of food delivery services has popped up over the past few years. Enter: Friends & Farms.  Full disclosure: I work for Friends & Farms (www.friendsandfarms.com) and I want to tell you what is so fabulous about what we do from a consumer’s perspective.  

Each week, Friends & Farms gathers the freshest, seasonal ingredients from regional farmers and producers and then packs the baskets so its customers can build 2-3 meals out of them, plus extra food items.  That means the baskets include fresh produce, but also meat, seafood (if you like and want seafood), dairy, bread, eggs, and fresh fruits and veggies.  The baskets are picked up at convenient locations in your neighborhood on a weekly basis (Severna Park, Columbia, Catonsville, Timonium, Boordy Vineyards & more).  What's more, the baskets are available year round and are available in different sizes for different sized households and families. You can sign up by the quarter, or by the month, and you can even try a single basket out before making a big commitment. 

This past week for example, my husband and I received a rack of ribs (PA), fresh caught and cut cod filets (MA), some fresh mozzarella (DE), a half-gallon of milk (PA), Napa cabbage (NC), tomato puree from this past summer's tomato harvest (NY), onions (NY), sweet potatoes (NC), apples (PA), fresh pasta from a producer in Silver Spring, and bread from freshly milled flour from The Breadery (MD).  My husband drinks milk like it's going out of style, so we add a half-gallon of milk to our basket each week. All of this food cost us $55.  

It's an understatement to say that we can tell the difference in the quality of each of the food groups. Plus, we know where it comes from and we can budget around our basket each week. Most times, we find that we don't need to go to the grocery store except to pick up some dry goods. 

What's the moral of my long and drawn out story (blogpost)? Think a little bit differently about how you source your food this summer. Ask questions about where it comes from, how it is produced and why. Find out who grew, raised, baked or harvested it. If the people you get your food from can't (or won't) tell you where it came from, think twice before buying.