Supporting with Money

With the distractions of DH's job (keeping him up late at night which throws everyone's day off) we missed our Polyface pickup this last weekend. I'll incur the $20 restock fee, which I will gladly pay because, hey, it was my fuck up. For the next 4 weeks I'll be ordering my chicken, steak, ground pork, ground beef, etc. through my weekly dairy order. The prices are comparable except for roasts where there's a $2.50 or so price difference. It got me to thinking about where I should be sourcing what food?

People have been touting the support of your local farmer for several years now. My dairy farmers are not in the national (or even international) spotlight like Joel Salatin and Polyface Farm are. Wouldn't they be more deserving of my money? However, Joel Salatin is bringing a revolution in farming techniques/technology to the industry and I want to support that. Based on how quickly items go out of stock (they restock the inventory online every Monday) I can tell he has plenty of support. So, really, it comes down to money for me. Which is kind of the point of this blog isn't it?

Tomorrow I'll be picking up what will hopefully be the start of my monthly purchase of Alaskan wild-caught salmon and locally roasted fair trade (and in some cases organic) coffee. From what I understand, this farmer gets the salmon directly from Alaska, no middle man, so my money will help support his operation as well. If there were such a thing as local wild-caught salmon or locally grown coffee I'd purchase that. :D I've even debated not drinking coffee but I'm not quite ready for that leap yet. Cutting down my carbon footprint is definitely on the list of things to do but I have many other things to figure out first.

I learned about a local farm, Moutoux Orchard, that does a winter CSA. Mostly root veggies but also includes grassfed meats and unlimited (within reason) flour. We're GFDF (again...) so I wouldn't be taking advantage of that but it's a nice idea. It may be something to consider for next winter, and for that matter I may need to check them out for the regular season. I might go back to Great Country Farms, though, because they have a great option and they deliver.

I promised on my last post that I'd be going through financials but it has been chaos in this house. We took a trip out of state to visit some friends, had a cold hit two of us, and I am now trying to get us back onto a schedule again. On top of that, my husband (who is in IT) has been on call seemingly constantly because he's the Subject Matter Expert - this week, though, he is the primary on call guy so it's a little more intense. I've had a word document open for several days with my meal plan, the price breakdown of some things, all outlining this financial post. I'll get there.

Back to the point of this post.. All farmers involved in my life deserve my attention and my money. They're all doing their parts, great or small, to fix our food system and provide the best nutrient dense foods they can. It will continue to come down to money for me for now.