Just got a box of produce delivered to the front door ...

[Auggie]

local organic farm. Tangellos, lemons, radishes, kale, lettuce, carrots, cauliflower, apples, etc.

This isn't your regular supermarket produce … it has actual taste, aroma and even a different mouthfeel.

[dballance]

1. Wow, that's awesome! Wish we had that service here. Updated: organic service company.

Looks like there is an organic produce delivery service in Portland Oregon. Maybe there's one where most people live near big cities. Here's the link to the one for Portland:

http://organicstoyou.reachlocal.net/home/index.html

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. You lucky dog.

We have nothing like that around here.
Maybe you can expand your post to discuss the system of market sharing, in case others want to do the same in their area?????

when I had my lil organic farm, I got so spoiled by having REAL food available, to the point I would not even eat cooked eggs for years and years after I sold out and moved.
Now that we have chickens again, I can enjoy them.

[Auggie]

3. It's a single farm ...

in the Capay Valley, northern California (90 miles northeast of San Francisco and 35 miles west of Sacramento). Guy knocked on our door a few weeks ago and we decided to give it a try. We support the local farmer's market but that's not in operation in the winter. We used to get produce delivered when we lived in San Francisco but that was different organization and I can't recall the name. One of the benefits of living in California, I guess.

Yes, there's nothing like fresh eggs. Now I'm jealous. At $8/dozen at the F.M. they're an occasional luxury.

Website: http://www.farmfreshtoyou.com

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. $8.00??????????????

Wow...around here I am giving them away and having a problem getting takers.
Suffice to say organic food has not made inroads in the rural south.

I AM getting half a beef from local farmer...petty expensive outlay at one time, which I prefer to think of it as an inverstment for the next year or 2. Beef prices are going to sky rocket because of the drought, and speculators.

[Auggie]

5. Yes, $8.00

that's Northern California for you! We can easily drop $20-$30 at the FM in one morning. But that's the price of real food when you count in irrigation, labor, organic practices, property taxes, and transportation.

We only go to these extremes with the locally produced because it helps support the farm community, organic (and mostly sustainable) practices and tastes so much better. You do get what you pay for.

[Warpy]

6. Some backyard produce can really spoil you

like tomatoes ripened on the vine, corn that doesn't get picked until the water comes to a boil, and peas that don't have that really strange flash frozen off flavor, even if you blanch and freeze them yourself. Ooh, and backyard broccoli was a taste revelation, too, the heads a lot smaller but the stems really tender.

Unfortunately, I now live in the desert and while I had a great garden the first couple of years, the drought moved in to stay and it's so expensive to water that even greenhouses that hold moisture in don't work all that well.

[raven mad]

7. The only way this happens here

is if a neighbor has too much zucchini and puts a bushel on your porch!

[Auggie]

8. If another neighbor grows too many tomatoes and another too many peppers ...

(and so forth), you could have a nice neighborhood co-op.

[raven mad]

9. Peppers need a greenhouse, pretty much, here - or inside your cabin.

Tomatoes, however, go nuts if you get the right kind planted. My biggest problem with tomatoes is letting them get past the green stage (loves me some fried green tomatoes).

Seriously, though, lots of folks do the co-op thing. It seems radishes, cabbage (if you can keep the moose out of it), kale, etc. - all pretty much fall to winter crops - are excellent growers here even without soil supplements.

But corn? DAMN I wish I could grow corn!!

[Auggie]

10. Alaska? No wonder.

I tried corn. It's a pain-in-the-ass. Even with hand pollination I got only one ear. But aphids laid eggs in the husks and ants went after the eggs. Big mess.

[raven mad]

11. My father-in-law (I still miss him!) could do it.

I still don't know how! Of course, this was back in 1969 or so. He did it for a few years but it was quite labor-intensive. This was just a few years after the Great Flood of 1967; they lived on the river, and the house was about 1/4 acre away from the river. The back yard was garden. It may have had something to do with the extra nutrients, I don't know! All I know is, as a kid/teenager, I had this cool boyfriend whose daddy could grow corn!! (Boyfriend is now my spouse of a long, long time.......)