I signed up to be a part of a co-op for local delivery of boxes of organic produce. On the one hand, I'm excited, because it's a lot of variety, nice big boxes, for less than it would cost to buy the stuff in the store, possibly less than it would be to buy comparable amounts of conventional produce. I have a hard time buying produce--even in the summer I'm always meaning to go to the farmers' market and never seem to go, then when I do go it's been so long that I overbuy. The box is all the produce we'd need aside from something specific for a recipe, and even then, if I plan, I can pick substitutions, order more one week, skip a week--it's all very flexible.
But otoh, it's $33/week for the box. I won't be picking it myself, so the chance of a bruised fruit or something. It's more produce than we eat/spend now, but only because we often go a week without fresh produce bc of my poor planning.
: I can see how it makes sense--no store, fewer employees, etc, and it seems like a good deal--but it still seems like $132/month for produce is an awful lot!
Tell me this was a smart thing to do!
(Btw, if it doesn't work out, we can cancel, or go bi-weekly, or whatever.)
Also, we're doing is as part of a co-op and part of the cost goes to support the local birth center (where I will never birth bc I do homebirth, but I go to all kinds of groups and really benefit from the community there, and I like the chance to give back without costing me anything more than I'd spend anyway.) The only difference with the benefit co-op is it gets delivered to a home in my neighborhood instead of direct to my door.
Am I being sucked in to something silly? I don't think so, but $132 is a lot of money!
But otoh, it's $33/week for the box. I won't be picking it myself, so the chance of a bruised fruit or something. It's more produce than we eat/spend now, but only because we often go a week without fresh produce bc of my poor planning.
: I can see how it makes sense--no store, fewer employees, etc, and it seems like a good deal--but it still seems like $132/month for produce is an awful lot!Tell me this was a smart thing to do!
(Btw, if it doesn't work out, we can cancel, or go bi-weekly, or whatever.)
Also, we're doing is as part of a co-op and part of the cost goes to support the local birth center (where I will never birth bc I do homebirth, but I go to all kinds of groups and really benefit from the community there, and I like the chance to give back without costing me anything more than I'd spend anyway.) The only difference with the benefit co-op is it gets delivered to a home in my neighborhood instead of direct to my door.
Am I being sucked in to something silly? I don't think so, but $132 is a lot of money!
: ) What I mostly notice is that we eat significantly more produce than we used to. We make a conscious effort to eat stuff from the produce box in every meal, because otherwise our fridge quickly gets full of it and we can't keep up with it! This also has the effect that we never even feel tempted to get takeout any more, because it would just make it that much harder to consume our produce allocation... Anyway, for our family it's had a positive effect on our eating habits and we're very happy with it.
It's $55 but saves us driving 45 minutes to get the nearest good organic produce. You can also add to it and make up to 3 substitutions.
