It's About Time

In one form or another, we are asked the question a lot – “I want to buy my family’s food directly from farmers, what would a family budget look like?”.  There are so many variables at play, it is nearly impossible to come up with an appropriate answer.  It is a lot like asking – “how much is a car?”.  Do you want the car to have heated leather seats, or are you fine with warming them up with your rear-end?  Will your automobile auto-correct your driving if you veer into another lane, or are you willing to put down your phone and pay attention to the road? 

How much we spend on food follows much of the same thought process. Am I going to put in the work, or will I pay for convenience?   I can easily thaw out a package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and whip up an easy dinner.  If your family wishes to make the transition into ZOE Farms that way, plan on paying $13 per pound for that convenience for ONE MEAL.  On the other hand, if you wish to extract maximum value from a WHOLE CHICKEN, then follow along. 

A chicken has two breasts, two breast tenders, two wings, two legs, two thighs and a back that they are all attached to.  If our chickens average five pounds and we sell them for $4.29 per pound, you get all that for about twenty-two bucks. Here is what that one whole chicken does for us:  a family of four, full-size appetites. 

Meal 1 – fajitas stir fry using breasts and tenders
Meal 2 – grilled legs and thighs with wings
Meal 3 – chicken veggie soup using the back and neck as a base stock

For twenty-two dollars, we fed our family three times. Compare this to thirteen dollars for one meal and it is easy to demonstrate the cost of convenience.  If I want to text message while driving, I should probably pay for the technology to keep me safe.  If I put my phone down and watch the road around me, I don’t need that safety feature on my car. If I want to do the work in the kitchen, then I spend the time to save the money. 

Saving a ton of time, a family can hit the drive-thru to pickup four chicken sammies, four fries and four toxic sugar-fiz drinks (That should be the lawful name of them :-)  for about twenty two bucks. On the flip-side, a family leaving our farm with a twenty-two dollar chicken will go home, cut it up and stretch it into three meals.

In both situations, nearly the same money is being spent. The difference is choosing how to spend TIME.  If the line-ups at the chicken sandwich joints are any indication – there is plenty of MONEY available in food budgets. Similarly, our rapidly increasing group of farm patrons tells me that there is a growing number of folks dedicated to giving their families the most important resource they have when it comes to food – the TIME to prepare it.