CSA Cancellation

Well, after a solid year of being a member of the Beneficial Farms CSA, we have decided to place our shares on "hold", which essentially means that we're cancelling it.  We debated about this a lot over the last few months and ultimately decided that it is just time.

One of our CSA shares

Why?  Well, here are our reasons:
~ We became members of the CSA to save money on local, organic produce and haven't been saving money.  Our CSA sources from a variety of local(ish) farms.  This winds up giving us variety in the form of a bunch of random items.  We then find ourselves needing to purchase other items in order to make complete meals/pull it all together.  Maybe if we were more experienced in eating and cooking such a mish-mash of foods this would be OK :-)  By the way, I say local(ish) because we have seen things brought in from Texas and Colorado, and while those states are next door neighbors, I wouldn't really call them "local".
~ We are growing our own veggies.  While we still have lots to learn, the goal is to, ultimately grow most of our produce.  At the height of the season, we were growing the same items as our CSA was providing, which meant too much food to consume at once, with too little time to preserve it all (our summers at work are very, very busy).  Our chickens were eating better than we were and again, we weren't saving any money.

~ As we learned more about the produce we were getting, we learned that it isn't all organic.  Now, we understand that the actual label "organic" isn't the point (and is very expensive to acquire), however, I really find value in knowing exactly what is going into our food.  In growing our own produce, I know exactly what is going into every bit of spinach, tomato and butternut squash.
~ We are waiting on 1/4 of a cow to be delivered to us any day now.  With that much beef coming in the door, we won't be needing a pound of ground beef each week.  At least not for a very long time.

Now, do I still support CSAs?  Absolutely!  I think they are super important, can be a great resource for a lot of people and support local farmers in invaluable ways.  Local Harvest is a wonderful resource if you are looking at joining one in your area.

Do I have a little guilt by pulling out of our CSA?  Yep.  We're actually a little sad about it and battled the feeling of letting the CSA down.  But, in the end it was time to find the balance between what is best for our family vs. how to contribute to something a little bigger than ourselves.

So, what happens if/when we can't grow all of the produce we need to feed ourselves?  We have decided to make a weekly (or bi-weekly) trip to the Farmer's Market with a set budget, in cash.  This way we won't spend too much, we can contribute to our local (really local) farmers and we can ask direct questions about the food we're looking at consuming.