Cheap Things

Reading Herrick Kimball's Deliberate Agrarian blog, I discovered the writings of Mr. E. P. Roe.  He was a Christian Agrarian writer in the 1800's who penned the following quote in 1886 the "The Home Acre":

"I am often told, "It is cheaper to buy fruits and vegetables than to raise them." I have nothing to say in reply. There are many cheap things we can have. Experience has proved that one of the best things we can have is a garden, either to work in or to visit daily when the season permits. We have but one life to live here, and to get the cheapest things out of it is rather poor ambition."

This quote made me do some thinking.  I'm a thrifty person and we tend to live very frugal lives, stretching a dollar about as far as we can make it stretch.  We're always looking for the best deal, primarily because with a single income, necessity dictates that you are thoughtful about how you spend your money.  But we were discussing the other day the fact that lowest price is not always best.  In fact, with food, the opposite is mostly true.

A couple of examples I can think of right offhand are strawberries and tomatoes.  If you go into the grocery store, you'll see red strawberries that are as plump as a spinning top just begging you to purchase them. They'll be priced to move, too.  When you get home, wash them and take a bite, nine times out of ten, you'll be disappointed.  That beautiful strawberry that was shipped across the country, while nice to look at, is white on the inside and tasteless.  What a disappointment!  The local strawberries, while smaller and generally a little more expensive, are sweet and red and delicious.

Similarly, with tomatoes - you'll see perfectly shaped, uniformly colored, blemish-free tomatoes in the produce section.  Take one of those home and slice it and it is light pink on the inside, grainy, dry, and tasteless.  This product compares in no shape or form to a home grown tomato.  In fact, most of the store-bought stuff shouldn't be allowed to be labeled as tomatoes.

Growing your own

Cheap things.  How can they grow this stuff, truck it across the country or fly it in from foreign lands and sell it so cheaply?  We made a conscious decision years ago to try to grow a lot of our own food.  Sure, we buy food at the grocery store from time to time, but if we can, we're growing it ourselves.  We keep very detailed records on production expenses and sometimes, for vegetables, meat, eggs, and milk, we scratch our heads and wonder how big producers/stores can sell food so cheaply (BELOW OUR PRODUCTION COST!) and remain profitable.  Even with economies of scale, it is hard to fathom how it can be done.

Squash, Cucumber, and Melon seedlings

Actually, we're only partially concerned with the answer to that question, for you see, we're comparing different products.  The final analysis, which let's be honest, takes place at the end of your fork, will underscore the fact that quality is worth paying for - either paying more money for it by supporting local farmers/producers or paying more in terms of growing it yourself, putting in the work (sweat equity) and time necessary to produce food you can savor and be proud of.   

Sometimes the bottom line has to have more factored in than outlay of a certain amount of nickels and dimes. The epidemic of diabetes and obesity in America, I think, is exhibit A of the deleterious effects of the availability of 'cheap food.'  I agree with Mr. Roe.  There is a time and place for purchasing and consuming cheap things. Food, however, is not one of them.