Building a local food Budget
1: How many times per week you eat meat you prepare?
2. How much do you typically use per meal? 4,6,8 oz per person?
3. Quality of meat matters!
4. How often each week do you eat out? At school, work, or at a friend’s? Could you make these meals more cost effective by bringing a bag from home?
5. Could a veggie CSA benefit your budget also? There are customizable CSA’s where you can select what’s in your box each week!
PAYMENT METHODS
Payment Methods Explained:
1: CASH We always accept cash. At the farm or at any drop locations
2: CHECK We do accept good checks.
3: CREDIT CARD We do accept credit card. We add a non-refundable 3% convenience fee to swipe purchases. and a 4% convenience fee to manual entered (phone) transactions.
4: EBT/ SNAP / P-EBT Yes, we accept EBT at the farm, or any location for payment just like cash. You may use your benefits for ALL food products we have. Bundles, or individual cuts. We Trust that you will come to pick up your order, and will not be required to make a down payment/ deposit to order. Most orders are fulfilled within a week.
QUALITY:
We are what we eat! So are the animals!
Ask the farmer what they feed their animals, and were it comes from.
In YOUR diet, what proportion of fat do you need with your protein?
It can take more pounds of chicken to equal the amount of protein and fat in a cut of beef, pork, or lamb. Variety and balance are both important!
Be concious of what the animals were fed! It Matters!
BRING Local foods into ALL aspects of your Diet!
*make great snacks
*lunch box meals
*eat IN
Many folks I know have found they are more aware and concious of what is in food offered at the local steak house, and have grilled a better tasting steak at home.
BUDGET for Healthy Meats
1/4 Beef is about 100 lbs of meat (2 lb per week) or $15/ week
1/2 hog is about 70 lbs of meat (1.5 lb per week) $9-10/ week
2 chickens per month is about 7 lbs (1.5 lbs per week) $7.50/ week
Have you tried doing freezer meals? They can also streach your food budget!
RECAP:
For $33/ week ($132 per month) you can enjoy 5 pounds of meat a week when you combine all the options to the left!
Combine with a CSA share that runs 20-25 weeks a summer, and often costs about $20-25/ week and Slash your food budget tremendously!
TIP: It costs about $5/ month to maintain a chest freezer in your garage.
Final Thoughts:
Consider a customizable CSA if you don’t have a deep freezer. We can help you budget thru the entire year.
If you have a deep freezer, remember, 50 lbs will give you 1 pound per week for a year. The small CSA also budgets you $10 per week for a year. That’s really reasonable!
A family of 4 may use 100 lbs per year (2 lbs a week) or $20/ week on average.
Maybe you cook at home more than that.
