I had a very eye-opening dinner this week that I want to share with you. I was not in some fancy-smancy restaurant in San Francisco or New York, but rather at my very own dining table sitting on my very uncomfortable chairs that I have been meaning to replace for many moons. Anyway, back to my plate, 7 oz of catfish, sauteed kale, oven roasted potatoes, and fresh slices of bell pepper for some color. By all regards a healthy and pretty darn tasty meal I’d say.
But none of that grabbed me. As I looked at my plate, I asked a question that I seldom ask when I cook at home—how much did this meal cost? Maybe you ask yourself that more frequently, but being a thick-headed Norwegian, I just asked myself this for the first time in a long time. The answer that I came up with was $6! I thought my mental math was wrong. Too much wine can fuzzy the calculator you know. No way I could have a fish dinner with Organic veggies for $6. So I double checked my math, $3.50 for the fish and $2.50 for the medley of veggies.
I thought to myself that I would have paid $6 to get fast food tacos with an order of abdominal cramping. Or cheap burgers topped with a sodium headache. How could this be? How can our fresh and healthy food be the same price?
It was at this point when I started to think about all the times I have heard over the years that “It is too expensive to eat local/Organic.” Or “It’s yuppie food.” Folks, I do not want to sit back and allow this ridiculousness to continue. We as a community should not allow people to make such unfounded statements any more.
The statements that we should make is that we care about the health of our food, we care about the health of our earth, we care about the health of our local economy, AND we care about the health of our wallets. Therefore, because we care about all of these things, we choose to buy locally and Organically. The more we know and learn as educated consumers, the less we are able to fallback on excuses that carry no weight. Sunshine truly is the best disinfectant. So let’s shed light on these issues.
OK, so I will jump down off my Soap Box (which is made with 100% recycled materials by the way) and give you an update on our move to the southern part of the state to see what the demand is for healthier food options.
Many of the smaller communities around our state just are not on the radar of natural food stores. The populations just cannot sustain a brick and mortar store. And this is where I feel the model of the CSA can bridge this access to better food options. Our deliveries or drop-offs do not need the same population density for our model to work. We don’t need expensive stores to make the model viable, we just need support from the community. Our low overhead keeps us very flexible and we can add drop-offs in a day.
So with this in mind, let me share a success story for how our model can get into a community very efficiently.
Alamogordo, NM. Population ~32,000. We drive right through Alamogordo to get to our members’ kitchens in Ruidoso. So this week there was some interest in their community to get a drop-off started. 4 days, Facebook, 1 drop-off location, and 36 new members later, we will start bringing Organic/regional foods to Alamogordo. To me this represents a total success story for the future of how our statewide food system can look.
You are probably saying, “Dude, Farmer M, you cannot drive from ABQ to Alamogordo for 36 orders? That does not make sense.” And you’d be right if that was our only drop. But, we are not only going to Alamogordo, we hit 6 communities on a big loop that fills up our delivery truck and makes the whole trip financially viable for us.
Seeing the support from new communities like this brings the vision into focus for this rural land of enchantment we call home. We have to look at each community in NM not as a single entity but rather a part of the whole. Seeing the state through this collective lens will bring amazing food access to areas that again just are not on the radar for stores. This brings an exciting potential to our state I think.
Have a great week.
Farmer Monte