Friday, July 11, 2008

No More Garden Box

For the last two years M and I have been re-affirming our yuppy-ness by having a garden box delivered each week. It was like Christmas on a small scale. Each week I got to open the flaps on that plastic crate and see what crispy, sweet, flavorful presents were inside. Fruit actually smelled like fruit, and carrots tasted like carrots. It was really something of a revelation.

Pioneer Organics offered a service where you got to choose your own goodies. I loved going on their very useable website and picking all sorts of tasty, organic, and mostly local items. Not everything was always perfect. Things were occasionally green or bruised, but no more than what you would find in the grocery store. The prices were often high, but since most of the produce was such good quality it seemed worthwhile. We ate so many more fresh things when we had the box coming all the time.

Unfortunately, everything passes, everything changes. Our dear Pioneer was bought out by a rival company called Spud! In many ways Spud! offers the same type of service, but not everything was the same. For example, you could not exactly choose your own items, and when they did arrive they were often not up to the quality standards we were used to getting. Price was also an issue, and the day we received a cauliflower that was the size of a softball and cost $4, we were done. We'll just have to be twice a diligent about getting out to the farmers' markets now.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Sorry to hear that you we're happy with your recent delivery. This last couple of months have been some of the worst produce months we've seen. Local crops were extremely late because of the cold spring and so we've had to source our produce as best we can, and it has been much more challenging. You can rest assured that most of the Pioneer Organics staff are ordering and packing your spud! deliveries.

We'd be happy to refund you purchase price for the cauliflower and are truely sorry that the delivery didn't live up to your expection.

Peter
- from spud!

Anonymous said...

Expectation is not spelled expection.. Maybe it's this level of detail to particulars that result in spud! selling $4.00 softball sized cauliflower.

Enjoy your local farmers markets...