Support Local Food

When you buy your food from a traditional grocery store the food has been brokered by a "middle man" and typically the producer only makes about 10 cents of every food dollar that you spend. We get a lot of questions on the best ways to support local farms and producers. Here are some quick explanations...

Support 5 Fridges Farm and Partners

Shares

Signing up for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share helps the producer recoup more of the food dollar by directly paying the producer. The idea of the share is that the consumer is sharing in the "burden of production." At 5 Fridges Farm, we ask share customers to sign up for 3 months of a share and the products are distributed and made based on the amount of production (which varies throughout the year). The "burden" is that we have to make smaller batches that need to be be picked up on certain days rather than the convenience of a whenever-you-want grocery store. For those producing vegetables, the burden might be that the farmer puts the share of seasonal veggies into the weekly pickup - so the consumer learns to cook with veggies that are seasonal.

Local Markets

Other ways of buying local include finding a stores or online markets who sell direct from producers. While this is more of a grocery store model in convenience, many of the stores, including the 5 Fridges Farm Online Farmers Market, take a lower handling fee than a traditional grocery store and allow producers to set their own prices.

Summary

Each of these can be less convenient than a traditional grocery store, however, by supporting local producers you continue to have many options of locally produced food.

Resource

If you would like to eat locally, a great way to switch up your diet is to consider seasonal-based eating rather than recipe-based eating. A wonderful book on the subject is "The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food" by Dan Barber.

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11100 W 38th Ave.
Wheat Ridge, CO 80033
(720) 432-9437

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