A teller at my bank told me about Bountiful Baskets, a subscription agriculture cooperative that delivers fresh produce throughout AZ, ID, and UT. It even delivers to Parowan, Utah, about eight miles from my home.
The organization’s website is difficult to navigate, but it does offer some information about the program:
“Bountiful Baskets is not a business. It is a group of people who work together for mutual benefit… We are completely volunteer-run and make no profit… This is a grass roots, all volunteer, no contracts, no catch co-operative.”
Their goal is to deliver $50 worth of fresh produce for $15. They also offer “add ons,” like bread, Italian baskets, tortillas, and such, at an additional cost. Five loaves of artisan bread costs $10.
Their sites are numerous, including two in Cedar City and two in Enoch. They deliver to Parowan every other week. The catch is, you pre-order and pre-pay on Tuesday, and pick it up at 9am Saturday. If you forget to order, you don’t get a basket. And if you forget to pick it up, they donate it to the local fire department.
This seemed too good to pass up, so I ordered a produce basket ($15), five loaves of 9-grain sandwich bread ($10), and five loaves of Italian olive oil bread ($10). I’ve been waiting impatiently for Saturday morning to arrive…
The produce is distributed from the driveway of a private home. Over a hundred people lined up to receive orders. When I reached the front of the line, a volunteer escorted me to the baskets, and helped me load one basket of fruit and one of vegetables into a cardboard box. Then I moved to the checkout table, where I signed that I had received my order, and picked up my bread.
What do you get in a $15 produce basket? Start with 3 bundles of very thin asparagus. That alone could cost you $15 in a grocery store! Then add (weights approximated) five pounds of tomatoes, three pounds of apples, two bunches of bananas, a pound of strawberries, a mango, a half pound of kumquats, two large heads of Romaine lettuce, a head of celery, some red kale, a bunch of scallions, and a head of orange cauliflower.
Obviously this isn’t locally grown, since we still have snow on the ground (and Utah isn’t known for its mango crop). The website says it comes from a restaurant supply warehouse. But I noticed the mango came from Mexico, not South America. The strawberries came from Baja, and the apples from Washington. I read somewhere on their site that they buy their bananas from Mexico, too– not South America or the Philippines. And in summer and fall, they buy produce from Utah and Arizona.
In my book, the closer to home the better. South American mangoes tend to be so tasteless they are rarely worth eating. Mexican fruit doesn’t have to travel nearly as far.
So far, everything in the basket has tasted great. The Italian bread is fantastic. The 9-grain is a bit long and narrow– it’ll make smaller sandwiches– but very tasty and of good consistency.
What will the two of us do with all that food? Eight loaves of bread went in the freezer. Tomorrow I’ll get out the juicer and make tomato-apple-celery juice. We’ll have asparagus for dinner. And we’ll probably eat half the bananas before they get too ripe. Then: strawberry banana pancakes for breakfast, and banana bread for dessert! (Any extra bananas we’ll throw in the freezer to cook with later.)
I’ve been looking for an alternative source of produce, and Bountiful Baskets definitely fits. Now all I have to do is remember to place my order every other Tuesday!
