Supermarket vs. Farmers Market vs. Your-Own-Home-Market...

Photo courtesy of mushanga

Last week I made my first trip of the season to a local farmers market. I'd never been to this particular one in years past, so I didn't know what to expect. What I found were 6 booths, each offering something different (which was nice, so I didn't have to feel bad about buying something from one person vs. another!). There were blueberries, raspberries, zucchini, radishes, lettuce, broccoli, honey, and wool/handcrafted items. After paying $4.50 for a quart of raspberries and $1 for 4 zucchini, I headed to the grocery store for the rest of my shopping.

At first I found myself thinking "$4.50 for raspberries?? Yikes!" But I bought them anyway, knowing how much my hubby likes them. And when I got to the grocery store and found they were charging $1.50 for a 6 oz container of non-Michigan berries, I didn't feel so bad.

There's something about picking up fresh produce from a farmers market, where you know the fruit and veggies were grown locally and probably picked within the last 12-24 hours. Sometimes "organic" food like this might cost a bit more than if it was purchased from a grocery store, but as you can see from my raspberry find, not always...

Of course, growing your own produce from a seed packet is ultimately the most rewarding. Knowing the work you've put in to making your crop happen, the planting and weeding and watering and harvesting, just seems to make it taste better. :) And makes you waste less. I try so much harder to eat -- or at least preserve -- every last bit of produce from my garden, where I've been known to toss things from the store that don't get used up before going bad.

But there will always be certain things I just won't grow at home. I haven't had any luck with broccoli or melons. There's a tradeoff of how much effort I put in vs. how much production I actually get. Or if I want to make a big batch of jam, I can't do that with the handful of berries I harvest from my own plants.

How much of the produce your family consumes comes from a supermarket? A farmers market? Your own garden?