Apr 23 2008
Mobile Farmer’s Market - An After Action Report
Joy and I signed up for the mobile farmer’s market available through Duke. You get to choose between 7 local farms, each of which offers a different selection of food (one farm offers fresh cut flowers instead of food). We signed up for Vollmer Farms, who is mostly organic, but not completely. John Vollmer was a former tobacco farmer who needed to find a way to convert the farm to a different product in order to survive. He’s been slowly changing most of his fields to organic production methods and I expect that in a few years, he’ll be completely 100% organic.
The way the process works is that we pay up front (in this case, $400 for 20 weeks) and every Tuesday, we get a box of produce that we pick up at the Duke Gardens, which makes it very convenient. The next Tuesday, we exchange the empty box for a new box and so on. Every Saturday, we get an e-mail telling us what will be in the upcoming box, which gives us a chance to meal plan and prep before our Sunday grocery run. In this last box, we got:
- 8 oz Baby Specialty Lettuce Mix ($4.50)
- 1 lb Strawberries ($5.00)
- 1 bunch Radishes ($1.50)
- 1.5 lbs Sunburst Tomatoes ($5.25)
- 2 lbs Turnip Greens ($5.00)
This allows us to eat more locally, which helps the environment and probably also our health. The hardest part is adjusting to thinking about
“what can I fix that will use what we’re getting?”
vs.
“what do I need to buy so I can fix what I want to eat?”
But it has opened up the chance to try some new things (I had never tried collard greens before last week). I definitely think it is a great thing. You may not have a mobile market near you, but check and see if you have a farmer’s market. It is definitely worth the effort.
