Pfenning’s Organic

Pfenning’s Organic

April 21, 2009, 9:12 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

I promised a post about other environmentally conscious efforts that combine with my commitment to cycling. Cycling to and from work, and as part of my everyday life is quite obviously my favourite thing to do, and it’s so much a part of my day to day that I honestly don’t think of it as a special effort; it’s just the way I live. And when I remark on it being an environmentally conscious choice, I do not mean that to sound purely directed toward outward concerns. If I consider myself and my health as part of what is ‘environmentally sound’ then getting my exercise by cycling is a very self-oriented thing to do. The point is that we do not have to serve ourselves at the expense of others, nor, indeed should we. This lesson I learned long ago from de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity wherein she elaborates on the distinction between types of freedom.

… but I digress. (I know: shocking, isn’t it?)

Anyway, my second favourite thing that combines a variety of efforts to live a more environmentally conscious (and conscientious, for that matter) life is to use the services of Pfenning’s Organic. Pfenning’s is owned by a local farming family who started (actually: returned to) organic farming practices in the mid-20th Century because the family worried that new industrial practices were harming soil and food quality. About 15 years ago one of the daughters opened a store out of which to sell their produce and the little store has grown out of the barn and into its own site in a small shop in St. Agatha, about 6 km west of Waterloo.

Among the services that Pfenning’s provides is the weekly delivery of organic produce in boxes that can be local-only, or a combination of local and imported produce. They will also deliver anything they carry in the store.

Every week I order a large ‘blended box’ (because I just can’t bear the thought of living without bananas and citrus fruit, and found that by November the local offerings of apples and cabbages and carrots depressed me). I also receive a dozen eggs every 2 weeks, and a litre of whole milk, from which I make my homemade yogurt.

How much does this service and product set cost me? a little less than $125 a month, and we are a family of 3, including the teen-aged boy who is set to ‘constant feed’. We do buy extra ‘ordinary milk’ for drinking because organic dairy is just so expensive, and we buy the bulk of our other groceries on our monthly trips to the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto.

Anyway, my points about Pfenning’s are these:

1. Delivery of food from the store to the client base is far more fuel efficient than for individuals to go shopping themselves. The routes are rationalised, and there is less waste.

2. During the Ontario growing season we are supporting local farms who grow their produce using sustainable practices.

3. The organic produce is more fragrant and more flavourful and more satisfying than industrially farmed, mechanically irrigated produce.

4. The prices are quite moderate even though by the pound organic costs ‘more’. The reasons for this are twofold: first, we have less waste than when we used to shop at the grocery store (because we are more mindful about what we have available to eat), and second, delivery keeps us from making frivolous trips to the store for potatoes or lettuce (that end up luring shoppers, including us, into purchasing all kinds of junk that we don’t need).

5. Staying out of the shops and avoiding stupid purchases of tchochtkis means that we consume/dispose of far less waste than before.

6. Because I receive my deliveries, it feels as though I’m getting a kind of ‘gift’ every week, and I do not feel ‘deprived’ because I haven’t bought item x, y, or z that I passed by in the store.

Some people choose to use CSA boxes for their food deliveries, and some locations have food co-op shops. I’m not into churchy stuff in particular, so I don’t use the CSA options around here (they are run by the local Catholic Diocese). And we don’t have any food co-ops around here.

Finally, Pfenning’s is a pleasant bike ride from my house, and I like to take jaunts out on my bike to their location. I’ll take pictures as soon as I have time to start those rides.

For now, I have to concentrate on grant writing and grading and junk like that.

4 Comments

4 Comments so far
Leave a comment

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI