The veg box delivery is great but for a while I've also been thinking of getting involved in a more meat-oriented CSA. I do like to eat meat, but have been making a lot of effort to make sure I'm buying good meat; fortunately in San Francisco that's not that hard, but getting into a CSA would be even cooler.I googled around a bit, found quite a few that didn't really work for me (like Marin Sun Farms) and decided to try Soul Food Farms: Chickens and eggs, only a $100 commitment and a reasonably convenient pickup location.
Once a month I can choose what I want online (one whole chicken and a dozen eggs in my case) and then pick it up a few days later on the way home. It's not cheap (working out at around $30 per order) but I like the regularity of it—ordinarily I might roast chicken two times a year but we really like it and even better we can use the carcasses to make stock, which is something we do use a lot of.
Is it worth it? I don't know. It does a have a high feel-good factor (poultry is one thing where I look at the options in the store and don't have much idea what the labels mean for the animals' welfare, e.g. organic vs. free range from the same supplier). And not having to commit to a regular monthly order means I'll probably top up my balance with $100 every so often and then order as I feel like it.
2 comments:
Hi - I'm the CSA coordinator for Marin Sun Farms. We're working on some improvements to our CSA in the new year and if you have a minute or two I'd love to know more about what didn't work for you. If you'd prefer to contact me offline, my e-mail is danny@marinsunfarms.com Thanks so much, and happy holidays. -Danny
Hi Danny,
I certainly didn't mean to knock MSF at all—I love your products! In fact the main reason the CSA doesn't work for me is that MSF meat is easily available in my local stores for about the same prices, so subscribing to the CSA just makes it less flexible for me.
I didn't realise before that you could subscribe to a custom package, which is cool. I had thought that to get a couple of pounds of steak each month I would also have to get a lot of other meat.
One thing I really like about Soul Food Farms' setup is being able to customise the order each months up until a few days before pickup, although I realise that probably complicates things on the farm's end.
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