It's Sunday night, and your housemate with the car just announced this is the only time in the next six days he's going to have time to go grocery shopping. So you hop in, go to Shaws — or Stop & Shop or Market Basket — grab a cart and head over to the produce aisle.
What's there? Some shriveled peppers, aging lettuce and an empty spot where the cucumbers should be. Surely there must be a better way, you think.
In fact, there is. Here are some ways to be environmentally and fiscally conscious while dishing up higher quality greens than the ones you'll find shrink-wrapped at the local supermarket.
Farm share
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a way to buy produce straight from local farmers. Through the program, you can select a farm and get seasonal vegetables delivered weekly for a per-season flat fee — usually around $450-500.
Some of the farms that offer this service are affiliated in some way with Tufts. World PEAS, a local, small farm co-op that is affiliated with the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, delivers boxes of seasonal vegetables to the Tufts campus on a weekly basis.
Emily Ruff, a senior, has ordered her produce through World PEAS in the past.
"I really liked it," she said. "It's not something that somebody who wants to have a menu tailored every week is going to really enjoy because you don't know what you're going to get until it comes. The biggest positive, though, is that you're getting local, high-quality stuff. … It's also nice to know how things work seasonally and gives you a connection to a farm."
While CSA farms allow their consumers to choose the size of their boxes — sometimes there are packages designed for couples or families, and other times, small and large sizes are advertised — they give them very little say on what the boxes will contain. Students who participated in a farm share did not think this restriction was too much of a hindrance, though.
"You could be confronted with, ‘Well, I have three heads of lettuce and nothing to do with it,'" Ruff said. "But you can always call up your friends and give them free food — you'll be very popular."
And giving away some of your "share" hardly hurts your own pool.
"We had so much food," senior Jordyn Wolfand said. Wolfand bought a winter share — a wintertime farm share — through Enterprise Farm, which has a partnership with Tufts Institute for the Environment. "We almost never supplemented. The only time we had to was when we'd think, ‘Oh, my God, we need avocado, and there's no way that's ever going to be in season here, so we have to buy one from California.'"
Indeed, with CSA farms offering other fresh items like eggs, grains and honey, not much supplementary groceries are needed at all.
"As a vegetarian, it's especially nice," Ruff said. "I would only spend money on pasta and cheese. If you can get over paying $500 upfront for something, then it really ends up being worth your while."
Community around food
Farm shares do more than just provide quality greens without requiring too much green.
"A lot of the farms have events you can go to, and it kind of becomes a club," Ruff said.
With the farms so close by — many of them are as close as Lowell, Mass. — you are invited to go see the source of your produce. "You can go to the farms and pick wildflowers or attend movie screenings," Ruff said.
Accompanying your weekly box are newsletters with updates about your farm and the people who work there, along with recipe ideas for the week's haul.
These updates can be eye-opening and meaningful for consumers.
"In these newsletters, you find out about how your farmer is having a tomato drought or it talks about problems you don't necessarily always think of. … It puts food more on your mind," Ruff said.
Wolfand agreed with this sentiment, saying that it made the value of food more salient.
"You start to appreciate certain vegetables more when you see them starting to appear after they've been out of season," Wolfand said. "It made the season more exciting."
With farm shares like World PEAS, the types of vegetables you receive can also be unfamiliar because a lot of the farmers are immigrants and are used to farming vegetables many Tufts students may not be used to cooking — a situation in which the accompanying recipes come in handy.
"Sometimes there'd be two or three that I'd have to Google and figure out what they were," Ruff said. "But a lot of them were good."
Sometimes the veggies delivered were not so much foreign as exotic.
"I got fiddleheads a few times, which are apparently a delicacy in Massachusetts and very gourmet," Wolfand said.
Local vs. organic
Many of the CSAs provide organic produce, but many of them don't. How important is it to ensure that you're receiving the healthiest organic products?
Most environmentally conscious consumers will be the first to tell you that simply buying local is preferable to ensuring that your product is certified organic.
In Massachusetts, farms that wish to be certified must go through a years-long process of applications and inspections that costs thousands of dollars. Many of the small, local farms that join together in CSAs are not able to put the required effort and money into the process, but they can provide pesticide-free, fresh produce for a fraction of the price of certified organic produce.
"A lot of times these farms will use organic practices but not be certified organic," Ruff said. "Personally, I'd rather ensure I have local first."
Alternatives to farm shares
Farm shares are wonderful programs to split among housemates or friends, but what if you're more of a greens nibbler than an insatiable herbivore?
Local produce is still available at the Davis Square Farmers Market, and many of its stalls are run by farms that also run farm shares, so the quality is comparable.
In addition to the good quality and low prices, the market has what Ruff described as "a really good vibe."
"One thing I missed [while on the farm share] was that there was no reason to go to the farmers market," Ruff said. "If you go all the time, you build a relationship with the vendors and they give you free samples; you develop a rapport."
Unfortunately, the Davis Square Farmers Market's season just ended last week. So if you're without a winter share, what are you do to now?
Fortunately, the practice of labeling the origins of produce in supermarkets has begun to catch on.
"I do try to shop at Whole Foods, not necessarily because of their image, but because I like that they have at least some connection with where they get their produce and have good labeling," Ruff said.
If you don't want to commit to a whole winter season of vegetables from a CSA farm, there are also other alternatives to winter shares that will deliver on a week-by-week basis and allow more choice in what each box contains.
Boston Organics offers customized boxes of produce, breads, coffees, teas and other select groceries for as little as $24 a box, which can be ordered online. And like many of the farm shares, they deliver directly to your door, even if that door is a dorm — take note, Tilton residents who wouldn't mind supplementing their meal plans with some fresh fruits and veggies.
The only downsides of using Boston Organics instead of a farm share are that, although the former makes an effort to provide local products, sometimes those wintertime grapes have to come from California, and also that without a connection to one particular farm, you lose some of the sense of community fostered by farm shares and farmers markets.
One other option is a CSA membership that allows the consumer to come to an appointed drop-off place and grab at the produce that they find appealing for that given week. For the average Tufts student with a full schedule and perhaps limited mobility, though, this alternative could be impractical.
So the next time you're peering into one of Shaws' bags of bruised apples on sale, trying to convince yourself that it's an unbeatable deal, think about these alternatives. Your stomach and wallet will thank you.
