I've mentioned on my personal blog that I've signed up for a CSA this year (if you're not familiar with the CSA format, it stands for Community Supported Agriculture and you pay an upfront cost to get a box of fresh (possibly organic, depending on the CSA) locally grown vegetables every week).
We subscribe to Johnson's Backyard Garden (which is an organic farm) and it costs $300 for ten weeks. We have some friends that we split it with (which also means we can split up the weekly pick-up), so it's $15 a week. It's a LOT of produce - we really have to work to get through it all.
Do I think it's worth it?
Depends on what your goal is. If it's to spend the least amount on food you possibly can, it's probably not worth it.
On the other hand, if you're trying to increase the amount of vegetables you eat, want to support local industry, and don't want to pay the really high sticker price for organic produce at the grocery store, this is a great way to go. For me, I've decided that it's worth a slightly higher price to eat better and put a fairly large percentage of my grocery budget into my local economy.
I feel like I've been able to keep our grocery bill fairly stable even with this addition, because I now plan my meals around our vegetables, rather than meat. Instead of vegetables being a side dish, they are part of practically everything we eat.
Plus, we've now eaten a ton of things I'd never tried before and very likely would never have purchased on my own (bok choy, rainbow chard, kale, escarole, fennel, etc).
Anyone else do a CSA?
