PowerSwitch

Do you buy local food?

I buy all of our veg and meat from a fantastic local supplier. I pay a bit more than the supermarket prices (I think?) but I haven't seen my prices rise too much this year. I also feel I am contributing to growth of the local food supply system, which is very important.

I feel like a bit of a fraud because although nearly all the veg we buy is organic, not all of it is local (by a long way, but really the 'where possible' deals with that I suppose). Nearly all of our meat's organic but it's from the supermarket, the last butchers having disappeared from York 'round about 1066...

Check this out for a great company....

http://www.sfmdirect.co.uk/

We are SO lucky to have a company like this near us. They really are thriving too. If there isn't something like this near you then you could do alot worse than start one. It would be a great business in every sense. Ethical, local and peak oil proof. Might help yourr community make it through the 'long emergency' if you can get enough demand to encorage local producers to diversify away from their core crops and fill local niches.

all of our fruit and veg is organic and reasonably local

we get a veg box from www.riverford.co.uk, everyone should check it out,
pretty good pricing and all organic.

all of our meat comes from my parents farm so organic there too (or as close to, and not certified of course)

we get an organic fruit and veg box delivered. Veg is from Yorkshire mostly, fruit not grown here much so "imported". Meat at butchers in our town tends to be from quite local or at least Yorkshire. We are a mainly sheep-rearing area, you can get meat direct from the farms if you can buy bulk for the freezer.

We get as much of our food as we can from Bury Market, which is local but not necessarily organic (although you can get organic stuff there too).

We grow some of the rest and we get some of the rest from Asda.

There really isn't one answer, but I suppose local organic/local non-organic provides most of the staples now.

My wife works in a farm shop. So, there, we try to buy local food, and local organic if the option is there. We buy their own beef, and the locally sourced lamb.
Cardiff has a good market on Sunday at 'Riverside'. Again, I try to buy local food from there, organic if possible. (There's one now at 'Roath' too, which I'll be testing out on Saturday).

If we've been on a holiday/day-trip somewhere, we'll try to buy something from local supplier/farmer too.

So, that's all the good stuff!
Now, the not-so-good, and the guilty-pleasures
If I'm cooking something a little special, then I'll end up using Sainsbury (the main local supermarket) to buy whatever the goods are. With imported stuff, I try to at least get the organic in those cases.

My guilty pleasure though is buying the occasional bit of Japanese food from the Korean/Japanese store in Cardiff. Mind you, I'm starting to source locally grown stuff or seeds for us to grow it ourselves so we have been weening ourselves off a bit.

but I haven't seen my prices rise too much this year

Hmmm, now there is a point. Food sourced from the local (organic and non-organic) supplies have not really gone up by much.

Greenbeast wrote:all of our fruit and veg is organic and reasonably local

we get a veg box from www.riverford.co.uk, everyone should check it out,
pretty good pricing and all organic.

all of our meat comes from my parents farm so organic there too (or as close to, and not certified of course)

We're with Riverford as well. We also get out milk from them. As for meat, we go to the local butchers once a week.

Our veg box and meat prices haven't risen as much as our "fill up" shop at Tescos (we shop online, so I avoid any impulse buys when wandering past the in-store bakery ) What really annoyed me a couple of years ago, was when our local baker (who made the best doughnuts in Exeter) closed. They also made great pasties, but my OH has discovered she has an amazing nack of making pasties and the pastry she makes is very, very good.

I had a sensible post to make but then some bright spark mentioned doughnuts *drools*

doughnuts

Hmm ... invention of the devil.

I once worked at a high-tech start-up which grew from 18 staff to 450+ in two years.

We started off with a 'bring donuts on your birthday' rule.

Big mistake. I ramped up to eating about six a day until we decided to revoke the rule.

It took me ages to lose that extra weight I had put on!

Vortex wrote:

doughnuts

Hmm ... invention of the devil.

I once worked at a high-tech start-up which grew from 18 staff to 450+ in two years.

We started off with a 'bring donuts on your birthday' rule.

Big mistake. I ramped up to eating about six a day until we decided to revoke the rule.

It took me ages to lose that extra weight I had put on!

Now that's what I call a doughnut!

Haggis wrote:I had a sensible post to make but then some bright spark mentioned doughnuts *drools*

Coulda been worse mate, I didn't mention cheesecake.

Glad to see lots of other Riverford customers - we are too and they're very good.

We also use these people: http://www.ownonline.co.uk/

They do all the other bits we need like toilet roll and all sorts of things.

Maybe we need to start a Riverford Appreciation Society sub-forum. And this week we are all learning to love Jerusalem Artichokes.
I'll join the doughnut fan club as well - but those things with a hole in the middle are donuts not doughnuts and to be deplored - a proper doughnut has jam in the middle and granulated sugar on the outside

Regarding organic/non organic locally grown, there are a substantial number of local growers who do not underake conversion to organic because of the cost, both initial and ongoing. Their growing methods are organic in all but name, the difference is money.

RogerCO wrote:And this week we are all learning to love Jerusalem Artichokes.

Fartichokes, please. Even soup made with them makes me fart.