Torn between frugality and organics when grocery shopping ... - Page 3

[carmel23]

if you can't buy organic potatoes, don't eat them or grow your own.  Seriously.  And if you can't buy organic look for bug bites in the greens. Seriously, bug bites mean that a bug has been noshing the food and it hasn't been coated with pesticides!  Potatoes and other high caloric food are worth growing yourself if you can't buy organic.  You get a big yield for little $.  check out the grow biodynamic people in wilts, ca.

[imamomx2]

It's all about balance for me.  We get a CSA share every week - it's organic, and we support local farms.  We also buy beef and pork from local farms in which we are able to see their practices and what the animals are fed.  I wish we could do the same with chicken but its so expensive.  Also we'd like to do a raw milk share, but it's expensive, and also... the convenience isn't there - we'd have to pick it up, and well, it's out of my way.

We buy organic fruit in the summer at the farmer's markets, but in the fall and winter, we get a lot of conventional produce.  I guess it's more important to me that the food is locally grown, so we can support local farmers, but we don't do this all of the time.

[robin4kids]

I am sooo with you on this one. It is very hard to decide what to buy organic and what to turn a blind -eye to and just get it because you need it and it is cheap.

One very extreme thing we have done is move to the country. ALL of our friends and family thought we were CRAZY when we rented out our city home and rented a broken down farm house on 40 acres of land. Now a year later we are broke, but LOVE the new life style. We have free range chickens, so all our eggs are organic. We are raising 3 pigs as well. We will keep one pig for us and sell the other two. We have a plan to buy 2 dozen meat chickens for our own food and to sell to family and friends in the next couple weeks. It only takes 6-8 weeks for a chicken to be ready to slaughter! (Sorry if this is too much info.)

We have always tried to buy organic Beef, but it was not till last night when we saw Food Inc. that it all became clear. We NEED to stay here and continue this life style. We have 5 kids and we just felt like we could not keep up with the city life. I homeschool my 2 youngest and the 3 older ones where getting too caught up in all the material things kids have now a days.

We want our kids to learn a more laid back life, where kids actually do chores and can see where their food comes from.

I am working on a blog about our new life. It really has not been easy, but we are dedicated to making it work.

We all should be able to afford organic food. I hope i am a live to see the day when we can all eat healthy organic food without stress.

[Chicky2]

Originally Posted by robin4kids 

I am sooo with you on this one. It is very hard to decide what to buy organic and what to turn a blind -eye to and just get it because you need it and it is cheap.

One very extreme thing we have done is move to the country. ALL of our friends and family thought we were CRAZY when we rented out our city home and rented a broken down farm house on 40 acres of land. Now a year later we are broke, but LOVE the new life style. We have free range chickens, so all our eggs are organic. We are raising 3 pigs as well. We will keep one pig for us and sell the other two. We have a plan to buy 2 dozen meat chickens for our own food and to sell to family and friends in the next couple weeks. It only takes 6-8 weeks for a chicken to be ready to slaughter! (Sorry if this is too much info.)

We have always tried to buy organic Beef, but it was not till last night when we saw Food Inc. that it all became clear. We NEED to stay here and continue this life style. We have 5 kids and we just felt like we could not keep up with the city life. I homeschool my 2 youngest and the 3 older ones where getting too caught up in all the material things kids have now a days.

We want our kids to learn a more laid back life, where kids actually do chores and can see where their food comes from.

I am working on a blog about our new life. It really has not been easy, but we are dedicated to making it work.

We all should be able to afford organic food. I hope i am a live to see the day when we can all eat healthy organic food without stress.

Our posts are pretty similar, but I didn't list the reasons we do what we do.  I completely get you.  Good for you and your family!  You will continue to love this lifestyle and I encourage you to look into getting domestic meat rabbits (we raise Californians and they are wonderful!).  They are easy to manage on a small scale, and you should have less problems w/the heat than we do (except this year, maybe!).  BTW, none of our chickens have ever been ready for the freezer before at least 12 weeks.  I guess it depends on what kind you are getting.  Rabbits, on the other hand, can be ready as soon as 8 wks, but we prefer 10.

[Momsteader]

If you get the Cornish X chickens, they can potentially be ready in 8 weeks, but we've always gone to 10-11. If you feed them 24/7 they may be ready in 8 weeks, but they will need to just literally SIT in their coop and not do anything in order to put on weight. And, you'll lose some (10-20% or mor sometimes!) to leg problems and heart attacks. If you take away the feed from 7 pm to 7 am, let them onto some pasture (we 'lure' them out by moving food/water outside, and take them out to 10-11 weeks (no more than 13 or so). You'll get nice big 7-9 lbs dressed chickens that had a good life! Our last ones were Cornish X (aka feathered meatbags per our son...they are pretty non-chickeny....they just sit around and eat!) were all roosters and they were ready by 10 weeks, but we took them another week and on average they were 7 lbs dressed and the biggest was 13 lbs live weight.

[Staceyy]

I don't buy organic. I do buy a lot of staples and cook and bake from scratch though. I make my own yogurt, granola, breads, soups, desserts, salad dressings, vanilla etc. I also have an organic vegetable garden. This is an affordable way for me to eat healthy.