Food Co-op

A couple of years ago, before the big switch to city homesteading, we participated in a local food co-op.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, a food co-op is a collectively owned purchasing group that focuses on making local or natural foods more affordable for its' members. In most groups, you should expect to work some volunteer hours at least a few times a year. Depending on the co-op you choose, you might pay online before a prearranged payment deadline or pay at the pickup site.  There are many different ways to make it work, however most ways are based on two types of co-ops:

In a private food co-op, shopping is limited to members only. You pay an up-front fee and possibly a set amount to purchase a share. You will act as part of a governing board responsible for making decisions as to the what, where, who and when.

In an open co-op, anyone may shop but only members get discount prices. The up-front fee is pretty much the same, but unless you are directly involved in the providing of the food, you will not have a lot of say in the process. Volunteers might help at each distribution site and members would be offered extra/leftover produce in return for their volunteer time.

The one we participated in was open. We paid a one-time administrative fee of $3.00 and then whatever the contribution was for the basket we wanted for the week. For instance, if we wanted a conventional produce basket the contribution was $15, or $25 for a 100% certified organic basket. Depending on the time of year and how far we want to drive to get the basket, we may have a huge variety of extras to choose from. Bread, herb packs, Mexican ingredient packs, tortilla pack or even a cookies pack to name a few. Early on Saturday morning we would drive to a local park where the baskets are distributed. Wait in line to confirm our participation has been paid for, pack it up and off we went!

Now that we are growing so much of our own produce, we've not as much need for a co-op. If you are interested in finding a local co-op near you, try Local Harvest.

Urban Homesteading and Meat

One of the dilemmas facing a city dwelling farmer is how to produce meat. Basically, the question is whether to raise, buy or eliminate meat altogether.

Raising meat is the most attractive option to any homesteading family, however, for obvious reasons, also the most difficult. If your farm is anything like ours, you have your pick from chickens or rabbits. There are a few other candidates that may work such as ducks, goats, pigeons or pigs depending on how much room you have. For rabbits, you would need a set of parents whom you will not slaughter. They should produce about 6-10 babies every 12 weeks. Doing the math, this puts rabbit on the table about once every other week. Not bad. Chickens are not even close to as productive. Using the same formula, you could expect chicken dinners about once every 10 weeks. Of course, the numbers can change dramatically based on the number of animals you keep. Double the parent rabbits or chickens and you will get twice as many dinners.

Buying meat is also a complicated venture for extreme homesteaders. While high quality meat is available at most grocery stores, you really have very little way of knowing anything about where it came from or how it was processed or raised. Usually, you can be sure that it is relatively safe to eat and this may be all that matters to you. If asked, we would say our chickens and rabbit are high quality, but we're a little biased. They eat our leftovers and vegetable scraps, so perhaps they share our nutritional content.

Going vegetarian is great, but anyone who has tried it who was not fully committed to it knows how long meat abstinence lasts. We've tried it a few times with moderate success, however, for reasons unknown to beast and man, we always jump off that wagon at some time or another. For those who have the will power and won't miss the taste of a mouth watering, juicy, salty, meaty, oozing with goodness steak, (you can see where our problems lie), this is likely the best route for the dedicated homesteader.

In the long run, we have resolved to implement all three strategies. Taking the seasons of plenty with the seasons of not-as-much and deciding which best fits our current situation. Adaptation, if you will. It is the way of the urban homesteader.

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