Farm Fresh to You

lizzzyg

Hi all,

I'm a lurker, and I just read the post below about having food delivered. Farm Fresh to You does deliver in my area! Does anyone else use this service? Are you happy with it? If this is for real, I'm so stoked!

TIA!

belovedbride07

I'm interested too...just checked and they deliver to my zip code as well! 

ETA: Looking at their site, I like that they'll work with you if you'll be OOT on your regular delivery day.  One of the local CSAs I looked in to basically had a "tough cookies" approach; you still had to pay for that week even if you notified them ahead of time that you couldn't pick up your box.

lizzzyg

Well, I signed up. We'll see!

belovedbride07

lizzzyg:

Well, I signed up. We'll see!

  Make sure you let us know how you like it!  I need to sit down with my grocery receipts and see how much we're spending on produce now so DH and I can balance the pros and cons.

sommerrayne

I just moved FROM santa monica and I signed up for this service at the LA Greek Festival when they had a promotion. My 1st box (*the discounted box) was 1/2 full and when I opened it fruit flies FLEW OUT EVERYWHERE! My house was infested for way longer than I care to remember! Most of the produce was rotten - like fuzzy full on mold growing on them (cherry tomatoes especially) I contacted them to tell them to cancel me immediately and never received a response. Got a second box and it was much more fresh but really a strange combination of items and TONS of bok choy because they were out of something else that was planned. I like bok choy as much as the next gal but I don't need 3lbs of my box to be bok choy. I contacted them again to tell them they could come get their box because I had canceled and wanted no more deliveries.

A THIRD BOX came. This box was by far the best but the potatoes were soft (so old), the carrots bent into a 180 when I took them out of the bags. Remember, this was by far the best box!

That said, they deliver all of the produce in really thick plastic bags inside a box. They'll take the box back for reuse but not the bags. The food is REALLY touch and go. They tell you (or at least did me in person when I signed up) that I could specify exactly the items I wanted each week and that is TOTALLY UNTRUE! You can only EXCLUDE what you don't want. If they "run out" of whatever is planned they toss in whatever they want - this happened on all 3 boxes....I had a TON of one thing (one time bok choy, one time apples with tons of bird pecks in them, and the other time was bendy carrots).

So, they FINALLY got back to me and did cancel me without charging me a cent which is ethically and legally the right thing to do but what a crap-tastic service! They're not fresh, they're semi-local, they're WAY WAY WAY more than a farmers market (most of them are year round! Santa Monica is a huge one but Culver CIty is really nice, runs late on Tues nights, and much easier parking...free at Trader Joes or other city lots for 2 hours) and you risk major infestation!

BE MAJORLY WARNED!

lizzzyg

Wow. I signed up, so I might give the first box a try, but I consider myself fore-warned. I live in the SF Valley, do you know of any year round farmer's markets up here? The only two I know of (Northridge and Sherman Oaks) are only part of the year. Thanks for being so honest!

sommerrayne

I'm not sure where you are but Van Nuys is all year:

http://findlocal.latimes.com/van-nuys/community-events/fairs-festivals/van-nuys-farmers-market-van-nuys-fair-festival

Here's a different one it appears:

http://www.localharvest.org/farmers-markets/M3716

Here's a list of a bunch that are year round:

http://www.ccfm.com/site/locations.php

Burbank:

http://www.burbank.com/farmers-market.php

If you just do some research, I think you'll find something near-ish you that's year round for sure!