Farmer's Market Flop

In the winter, Matthews Farmer's Market is open every other Saturday for a few hours, selling winter produce, eggs, meat and other treats. With our decision to go organic, the initiative to buy local seems to go hand in hand. Going organic, but buying locally as well, is a way to support local farmers and also control how far your food is traveling before you purchase it. A farmer's market, in theory, is a healthy eating-environmentally-conscious person's dream! Unfortunately, our experience today was a bit of a let-down.

We bundled up to brave the 30 degree weather around 8am this morning and headed in to the Farmer's Market-hopeful to purchase some winter produce, organic eggs, etc that we could incorporate into our meals this week. There were probably about 12 vendors and majority of what we saw were bakers (selling bread and treats), a vendor selling some radishes and a few other things, a guy selling mushrooms, a pick-up site for co-op participants and a vendor or two selling meat and eggs (there were some other things there, but nothing that we had gone there to purchase). None of the eggs were organic and a dozen eggs ran between $4-$5. Now, I am not knocking the non-organic eggs....I am still in the research phase to discern the difference between cage-free, hormone-free vs. organic, but $4 to $5 for  non-organic eggs seems like a heck of a lot of money!  I really do want to support local farmers and when prices are close to grocery store prices (or even a tad more), I will do it, but we are on a budget and have to go with the best deal we can find, and unfortunately the eggs at the Farmer's Market were not it. On a side-note, we did get organic eggs today at Wal-Mart (remember, budget shopping) for $2.97 which made me super excited!

Perhaps it was a flop because it was FREEZING this morning and it was the Saturday after the big ice this week...but we were disappointed not to see more winter vegetables being sold.  We may head over there again in a couple weeks and see if there is more to choose from, but in the meantime, we'll have to stick with the grocery stores in the area and do the best we can.

Hope you are all enjoying your weekend and staying warm :)

Until next time...