How to Go Organic Without Breaking the Bank

Frank BassThe average American family spends about $200 per week on groceries, most of which aren't terribly healthy. Play your cards right, and you can spend a lot less -- and eat a lot healthier. Read on to learn how my family does it.

It's true: Buying organic at the grocery store does cost a lot more than buying conventionally raised or grown food. It should. Organic food takes a lot more labor to grow. Instead of cheap, petroleum-based fertilizers, organic farmers have to find costly natural alternatives. Animals are raised without antibiotics, meaning they grow more slowly. And organic food generally doesn't contain preservatives to extend shelf life.

This doesn't mean you have to break the bank at the grocery store. When our family switched to an all-organic diet, our weekly grocery bill for a family of four ran about $250 per week. Within a few months, our weekly grocery bill had fallen to roughly $50 per week.

Here's how we did it:

Community Supported Agriculture

We joined a community-supported agriculture farm. For pure value, you can't beat a CSA. You buy a subscription -- really, a share in the farm -- and get food as a dividend. Some CSA farms give you a box of whatever is in season every week; others let you select a number of items. In 1980, there were maybe a dozen CSA farms nationwide; now, there are more than 2,000.

We joined the Picadilly Farm CSA in southwestern New Hampshire in 2008, paying $550 for a full share. Early in the summer, we harvested strawberries, basil and snow peas. We dried the strawberries for ice cream and granola; most of the snow peas were put into sandwich bags in the freezer for fried rice. The real savings in early summer came from the basil, which we blend with olive oil, garlic and sunflower seeds. Our harvest made enough pesto to fill three dozen sandwich bags, which we put in the freezer. Think that's not economical? Our local supermarket sells organic pesto for $8 for an 8-ounce package.

Later in the summer, we took home baskets and baskets of tomatoes, corn and onions. We spent a couple of weeks boiling down tomatoes, mixing them with dried basil, onions, and garlic. The result was about 100 quart and pint jars of tomato sauce, used for Friday night pizza, as well as the occasional batch of spaghetti, lasagna or baked ziti. A quart jar of organic tomato sauce costs about $4 at our local supermarket.

The CSA subscription continued through November. You'd think that pickings would be lean when the snow starts to fly, but we did quite well with potatoes, carrots and squash. Instead of buying a $5 bag of USDA organic-certified French fries, we simply sliced our potatoes into thin wafers, drizzled them with olive oil, and popped them into the oven at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.

The mistake most people make is to assume that you have to eat everything in your CSA box that week. That's the path to waste (or compost, if you prefer). We extend the benefit of our CSA by dehydrating spinach, onions, beets and apples; freezing squash, cantaloupe, peas, corn and pesto; and pressure canning jars of staples like green beans, carrots, potatoes and tomatoes.

The Farmers' Market

Ever wonder why a box of organic cereal has 35 cents worth of ingredients, but costs $5? It's because you're too far from your food. Generally speaking, the closer you get to your food, the less expensive it will be. There aren't any middlemen, processors, shippers or grocers at farmers' markets -- just farmers. There's a farmers' market in nearly every large and mid-sized city, and quite a few small towns have extremely well-run farmers' markets.

Look at the price of a quart of maple syrup. It can cost about $30. Go to a Vermont farmers' market, you can find it for as little as $15. Those organic brown eggs that cost $5 per dozen at the store? You can usually find them for $3 or less at a market. An ear of corn that costs 50 cents at a supermarket runs half that at a farmers' market.

Farmers' markets are also great for buying in bulk, especially if you show up early in the day. A few years ago, we decided that we wanted to dry some bell peppers to use in soups and casseroles. The market wasn't yet crowded, so we walked up to a stand and mentioned that we were looking for a deal on a lot of bell peppers. The farmer wasn't sure if he was going to have much business, so after two minutes and $20, we had a bushel of organic bell peppers that would have cost at least $75 at a grocery store. He was happy, and we were very happy.

Co-Operative Grocery Stores

When you join a co-operative grocery store, you're likely to get a serious case of sticker shock at first. But all you need to do to save money at co-ops is to (a) work and (b) buy in bulk.

We make our own bread, so we go through a lot of flour. Growing the wheat and threshing it ourselves isn't an option (yet), so we go to the Brattleboro Food Co-op, where whole wheat flour costs about $1.25 per pound. We buy our flour in 50-pound bags, so that's $62.50. Ouch. But since we're members of the co-op, we save 2 percent. We work a 2-hour shift every month, bagging groceries or washing produce or helping at the cheese counter. That saves us 8 percent. Finally, we buy most things in bulk, which gives us a 10 percent discount. The price of that 50-pound bag of flour has dropped to a more manageable $50.

(Needless to say, baking your own bread is a financial no-brainer. Our bread -- flour, yeast, water and salt -- costs around $1.50 per loaf. We eat about four loaves per week. Organic supermarket bread runs about $5 per loaf. Eating four loaves of that every week would get very expensive, very quickly.)

Bartering

Two things you should know about organic farmers: They have food. And they love to trade it for goods and services. Got computer skills but no honey? Time to babysit but not so many apples? Play the piano well but really want fresh, organic herbs? Find a farmer and start dealing.

We were trying to save money our second year with the CSA. Our ears perked up when the manager said he wished he had an easy way to deliver CSA boxes to subscribers in nearby towns. We worked out a deal to drop off boxes at another farm about 15 miles from the CSA every week so members wouldn't have to go so far to pick up their shares. In exchange, we got a full share for free, saving more than $500.

Since then, we've traded pork for lobster and fish, goat's milk and eggs for hay, baby goats and hams for an old pickup truck, and cheese making lessons for knitting lessons. Bartering is especially important in a bad economy; no one wants to spend money, but everyone wants to eat.

Gardening

Not everyone has an acre or two that they can use for a garden. But most people do have access to some sort of land, whether it's a suburban yard or a community garden plot or even a nearby park. In our case, we spent about $50 on seeds and planted a 30-foot by 30-foot garden. The results? About 200 pounds of tomatoes, 200 pounds of potatoes, 10 pounds of broccoli, 10 pounds of carrots, and a half-bushel of dried beans.

Our advice? Start slowly. Get some seeds or plants, and put them in the ground. Try something easy, like radishes or potatoes or blackberries. See what happens. Pay attention and keep the area weeded, but don't be obsessive. The worst case? You've blown five bucks on a seed packet or two. The best case? You get a taste of success, and you're eating for nearly free.