Tips for Buying Locally Sourced Produce, Meat, and Dairy::Living Whole(ish) on a Budget

April 9, 2014September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

So when I introduced this series, I really didn’t anticipate the response! Thanks to all who are commenting and sharing. Blogging is a lot more fun when there’s community. If you haven’t already, hop over here and like my facebook page. I’ll try to post regularly there and start up conversations where we can all share our favorite strategies. You can also follow me on twitter or instagram, and while you’re doing that, may I recommend you follow the inspiration of today’s post as well? We belong to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with Red Dust Ranch and you can find them tweeting, photographing, and planting cucumbers in rows that aren’t straight right here.

Red Dust is run by my friends Chris and Heidi Hook and a few years ago Chris and I were subjected to school lunches and sassy seventh graders together when we taught at the same middle school. Since then he’s gone off to literal greener pastures and now works the farm as his family’s sole source of income. I tell you this because that’s my number one best tip for anyone looking to change or improve their family’s grocery budget:

Make friends with a local farmer (and join a CSA).

Seriously. Chat with them at the farmer’s markets, stop at the roadside stand, research the local farms in your area and attend one of their functions. Because if you really want to get a great deal on produce, meat, or dairy products, losing the middle man is the first step. At $20 a week (2014 pricing), our CSA is competitive with other farmers but still less than buying the same quantity of organic produce at the grocery store. Also, it’s a set price. This helps me budget because I always know just how many dollars are coming out of that cash envelope. But the real beauty of this is, if Chris has an abundance of a crop, I get extra at no extra cost. You’re charged by the share, not by the pound or the package like at a store. Plus, supporting a local farmer means your money is directly going back to him to support his family or business. It’s a win-win for your budget and the local economy.

For information on joining the CSA with Red Dust Ranch, you can email me: lbrackett@reddustranch.com.

Shop around the block.

We all get used to shopping our one store because we like it, it’s familiar, we know where everything is located, there’s a Starbucks inside…I know. Me too. I purposely patronize our local Ingles because I like the clerks, and it’s a small town so there’s lots of familiar faces. (FYI, when you teach someone how to diagram a sentence they will remember that when bagging your groceries.) Plus, the more you shop one store, the better you can get at anticipating their sales and markdowns. So it’s a good thing.

BUT if you make it a habit to notice another store that might have better pricing on something you buy all the time, maybe it’s worth the extra stop to go there too? On my way home from Ingles, I pass a little produce market that’s locally owned and does carry some locally sourced produce, meat, and dairy products. A while back a friend let me in on a secret: it’s the cheapest place around to buy eggs. A flat of two and a half dozen eggs was $3.99 until last week. Now it’s $4.49 which the owner tells me is because their supplier (a local chicken farmer) went up on his price. But, she also assures me it will come back down after Easter. I hope so, but even if it doesn’t, once supermarket eggs return to their normal pricing after the Easter sales, it’s still cheaper for me to pick up my eggs here. (Just so you know, I’m not buying free range eggs. I would like to, but that’s not in our budget. I’m just happy they’re local.)

When the CSA is not in season, I pick up a lot of produce at this little market as well. My kids love carrots. They get them out of the fridge and start gnawing like horses, eating the peeling and all. They’ve eaten a 5 pound bag of carrots in a week before, so now I buy my carrots here. It’s $3.39 for a 5lb bag. That same bag is $4.99 at Ingles. They and another farmer’s market a few more miles from us were my primary sources for apples all fall and winter as well. Not only were their prices half of the grocery store, the apples they were selling were from local orchards.

Don’t be so picky about availability.

We all know that living in America means you can have what you want, when you want it. But if you change your mindset and concentrate on what’s in season, you can save money and learn to withstand some of the entitlement complex we all have. It’s April, right now. That means you’re seeing lots of greens, salad mixes, broccoli, cabbages, and other cold hardy plants coming into harvest. If you focus your grocery budget on buying what’s available a good price, instead of just what you want, you will save money with very little effort. For instance, I haven’t bought grapes since fall. They’re a summer fruit and I’m not paying $2.98/lb for something that will be $1.68/lb in the prime of its season.

If you shop farmer’s markets, you can go early in the day for the best pick, or you can go late in the day for the best deals. Farmers don’t want to pack up and carry back home what they brought to sell. So if you don’t mind the less popular vegetables, you can often get some great deals.

Looking for the recipe to go with this picture I posted yesterday?
It’s super easy and lends itself to whatever’s in season.
Roasted vegetables and sausage.
Dice up whatever’s in season or on sale (this is sweet potatoes, carrots, and brussel sprouts) and spread in an even layer on a roasting pan drizzled with olive oil. Top with diced sausage. I like smoked turkey links. Salt and pepper to taste. Roast at 425 degrees for 30 minutes or until vegetables are done.

Get your own cow or pig. For the freezer, that is.

If you have the freezer space and the upfront cash, you can buy meat in bulk from local farmers for a set price per pound. We did this a couple of years ago and bought a quarter of a cow from a farmer in Clayton (about 30 minutes north of us). It came butchered and packaged and we received a variety of cuts: roasts, steaks, ground beef, and stew bones. It came out to about $2.75/lb which is more than I like to pay for the cheaper cuts but way less than I’ve ever paid for a steak. Plus, it stocked my freezer for six months which made meal planning so much easier.

If you can’t do this, I would suggest doing what I do now. Figure out the store with the best deals on meat and buy it there even if it’s not your favorite place to buy your other groceries. I like to get meat and dairy products at Quality Foods, which is not the nicest looking grocery store in our area simply because it’s not shiny and new. But their prices are great, and Morning Fresh, their store brand of dairy products, is actually produced just a few miles away from us in North Carolina, which is way more local than Great Value. I’m not positive, but I believe some of their meat is fairly local as well.

Finally, know this. You can’t change all at once. Choose one thing that you really want to focus on and start there. For us, it’s been locally sourced items, specifically produce. I chose this because I knew I wasn’t feeding my kids nearly as many fruits and vegetables as I wanted to and I was blaming the high prices on fresh produce for that. But when I read Simply In Season (World Community Cookbook), it changed my outlook on availability and local sources and made me really want to see this as our lifestyle change. It helps, too, that Joshua loves to garden and he’s on this bandwagon with me. After all, you can’t get more local or frugal than the tomatoes grown on your own back porch.

Living Whole(ish) on a a Budget Series
April 9:: Tips for Buying Locally Sourced Produce, Meat, and Dairy
April 16:: Monthly Meal Planning (Week by Week)
April 23:: Ten Things I’m Making Instead of Buying
April 30:: What WIC Taught Me about Groceries

Linking up with Works for Me Wednesdays over at We Are That Family. Have you heard about Rhinestone Jesus: Saying Yes to God When Sparkly, Safe Faith Is No Longer Enough?

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that support my blogging and locally sourced habits.

Christmas Carol: Sneak Peek

December 5, 2013September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett1 Comment

And that’s as far as I got taking pictures the other night before the director in me took over and tried to scribble notes faster than ghosts fly on Christmas Eve.

But this is how I’ve been embracing my creative these past few weeks. Instead of writing my own life, I’ve been endeavoring to bring fiction to life in such a way that it makes people want to embrace their neighbor and be a blessing.

Then this morning we read our daily advent devotion with Ann Voskamp’s The Greatest Gift, and these words leapt off the page to me:

You will be experienced as a blessing–
to the extent you have first experienced yourself as blessed.

That’s just it. So often I don’t see myself as blessed and then I go out and try to bless others with a heart that is empty. But when I am loved–when I am acknowledged and shown compassion–how much greater is my capacity to share that with others.

Over and over, I have been helped by others in the past few weeks. People I barely know and people I love dearly have given of their time, talent, and efforts to help me see this commitment through. Which means the end result is not only spectacular….

it is a blessing. To me. To you.

A Christmas Carol: Scrooge and Marley by Israel Horovitz runs Dec. 6-8 and 12-15 at the Habersham Community Theater if you’d like to join us.

joshua · linkups · living local · marriage

Ziplining at Sunburst Stables {Behind the Scenes}

July 30, 2013September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett4 Comments

Last week, just before our anniversary trip, he got the report from his doctor that his heart had returned to normal function and he could begin conditioning himself back to activities more strenuous than solitaire and Candy Crush.

Apparently, that’s what he’d been waiting to hear because he’d saved his birthday money and when I asked him what all he wanted to do while we were hiding away in a little cabin on Blueberry Hill and playing tourist barely twenty miles from home, he decided on ziplining.

Really?

No, it doesn’t require any great athletic skill, and no it’s really not that strenuous, but ziplining? I’ve seen the pictures and a few videos and while the concept was intriguing, the actual idea of hanging on for dear life to a cable and a harness while brushing by trees and then having the ground rush up to meet you in a sudden stop was not on my list of anniversary activities.

I mean, seriously, I figured he’d still be recovering and we’d paint pottery because it’s a nice, quiet activity.

Ha. Instead, he took me over to Sunburst Stables, which is North Georgia’s premier place for ziplining. Seven zips, several 1000 feet long or more, one through a cave and 200 feet of darkness, all located in the woods and hill top pastures of a local family’s farm. We could have ridden horses instead. They’d have even packed a lunch for us. But no, zipping it was.

I was terrified. Not in a “there’s no way I’m doing this” way, but more in a “I can’t believe we’re both doing this and there’s four children at home waiting on us to come back.”

Sometimes life is scarier when you have kids.

Our guides were great. They were young college guys who boasted confidence and humor and assured us and the father/son duo with us, that the cables were designed to hold 14,000 pounds and weren’t going anywhere. They told us Sunburst has never had an injury, that the youngest zipliner ever was not quite 2 and the oldest was 92. They explained how to slow down (yeah, like I was going to touch that wire for anything) and they explained how they control the stop, so there’s no way to miss it.

All that I was still jumpy.

We opened with a short zip. Okay, got my bearings on how this is going to go. The next line was twice as long as the first and I think I kept my eyes closed the whole time. At any rate, I don’t remember much. But at the third line we were joined by the photographer, who happens to be the family’s oldest son, and his younger sister, who happens to be attending school in the fall with my girls.

It took a five year old to put me at ease.

She was funny, answering questions about how she likes to zip, and telling us how she can’t go on the cave line alone because she doesn’t weigh enough (not a problem I have for sure). She was teasing and being silly with the guides like they were another pair of brothers, and on our fourth zip, she informed me it was my turn to go first and I better get up there. (I’d been waiting until last each time.)

It was like having one of my daughters there, and I know they’d have been doing the same thing. Youth knows no fear and my girls would have all but pushed me off that platform if they’d sensed mine.

By the fifth and sixth runs, I was watching the scenery speed by and appreciating the beauty of where we live and call home in a whole new way.

But honestly, I didn’t realize that I had been enjoying myself until I saw the pictures.

Apparently I’d been smiling.

The last zip was over a lake with a fountain and you go with a partner and the likelihood that one of you will get wet. I left that to my husband because after all, this was his idea.

Definitely one of his better ones.

For more information on Sunburst Stables and all their great activities for families, couples, and anyone looking for an adventure in North Georgia, click here.

Linking up with the Behind the Scenes community over at Crystal Stine’s today. Check it out and be inspired to tell the truth behind the picture.