Looking into an Organic Food Co-Op

[Nada.Leona]

DH and I are looking into the following two options for locally owned organic food programs.

The first one is called Home Grown Organics. They do a weekly drop-off of organic produce to your home. I got a call from them today, and they advised me that the single person box ($30) would probably be sufficient for two adults (and one baby). You don't really get to pick and choose what goes into your box -- basically you get what's available, with special opt-outs for allergies or dislikes (in our case, DH doesn't like mushrooms or asparagus).

You can then order organic meats by the pound. Based on our regular diet, it's somewhere around $121.00/month for the meats we'd be buying, roughly $30/week, give or take.

Here's a piece from an email I sent off to him with my thoughts on the budget:

Here are the prices for different meats:

Chicken breast -- $12.69/lb. <-- FYI: This is the most expensive meat on the list. And there are some much more affordable options.
Chicken thighs -- $3.95/lb
Chicken, whole -- $4.50/lb.
Lean ground beef -- $4.50/lb.
Stew beef -- $5.95/lb
Bacon -- $6.79/lb
Pork chops -- $6.79/lb
Pork roast -- $4.75/lb
Cross rib roast -- $5.49/lb
Sausage -- $6.99/lb

I'm just gonna crunch some numbers here. Based on our current diet, in which you take sausages one week, hamburger another week, and pork chops the third week. We have chicken twice a week, pork once a week, hamburger twice a week, and various other meals. So let's use those to figure out what the cost would be for meat.

Monthly Meat Purchases:

$18.00 -- 4 lb. lean ground beef (5 lunch meals + 3 other meals)
$13.50 -- 3 lb. roasting chicken (this would create approximately 4 meals, plus chicken broth and soup)
$27.16 -- 4 lb. pork chops (5 lunch meals + 3 other meals)
$13.98 -- 2 lb. sausage (5 lunch meals)
$5.95 -- 1 lb. stew beef (2 servings beef stew)
$6.79 -- 1 lb. bacon (2 servings)
$9.50 -- 2 lb. pork roast (2-3 meals)
$10.98 -- 2 lb. cross rib roast (2-3 meals)
$15.80 -- 4 lb. chicken thighs (4-6 meals)

Total cost: $121.66
Total meat: 23 lbs meat ($5.29/lb average)
Total meals: 41 meals ($2.97/meal average)

So a typical grocery order would look like this:

$30 for produce
$30 for meat (took $121.66 and divided by 4)

So it's about $60/wk to get all organic locally grown foods.

Another option we're looking at is the Bruce Family Farm's Beef CSA program. In this program, you pay $55.00 and get 10 lbs of organic beef. Again, it's all beef and this is a monthly program. A typical box comes with 4 lb. ground beef, 1 lb. steak, 1 lb. stew beef and 4 lb. roast.

Prices aren't pleasant, by any stretch of the imagination, but we're considering whether they are worth it on the health front and what we would have to adjust in our current diet. Frankly, our diet leaves much to the imagination, I can assure you. Way too much crap and processed garbage.

So that's just what we're looking at.

The part that scares me the most? The chicken breasts. $12.69/lb. for boneless skinless chicken breasts?!

[StaceyS]

Wow! You have great options! I joined a weekly CSA that delivers to me veges, eggs. Also, I get 3 chickens/month for about 5 months and a holiday turkey. The price is high, but to me it's worth it. ($696 for 22 weeks). I'm also going to our local grass fed beef place where you can get a whole or half cow, or 20 or 40# boxes of beef for about $6/lb. (Cheaper the more you get at once).
Good luck on your journey!

[leighcat]

I would have to get a second job to be able to afford that! It sucks that organic is so expensive. It is so hard to grow things where I live. I joined back up with a church co-op but I will probably only be ordering grains from them. We would never be able to really afford to eat only organic.