So, I've been going just about every week for milk - lots of milk. And cheese (from Smith's), eggs (from Balance Rock Farm's chickens), butter (Cabot, usually), and some meat. It's nice - I now spend about 20-30% of my weekly grocery bill here.

This week, I actually spent some time talking to the farmer. In previous visits, I was really all business, or he was busy talking to someone else. But today, the stars aligned and we ended up talking for 15-20 minutes. If you've never talked to a farmer-owner, you really should consider it. In this day and age, you have to be insanely passionate, or obnoxiously stubborn (or both), to be a small farmer. He is the passionate type. Like most American farmers, he's on the north side of 50, and has a lot of experience in farming, and dairy farming and is quite willing to talk about it, and the business of farming and pretty much anything. If I didn't have milk and frozen meat sitting on the counter, I think I could have talked to him for another hour.

That's another thing you get from buying local - try having a conversation with an employee at your grocery store.

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Yeah, I'm kind've a geek. I wrote down how much my purchase cost at Balance Rock. Then I went on line and looked up the lowest sale prices I could find for Price Chopper (which is where I shop). Here's what it came out to:

Item PC Cost BRF Cost Difference
Honey $8.00 $8.00 $0.00
Milk $9.98 $10.80 $0.82
Sausage links $4.25 $4.84 $0.59
Hamburger $8.74 $8.38 -$0.36
Bacon $4.84 $4.93 $0.09
Total $35.82 $36.95 $1.14

So, it cost an extra 3% of my purchase to buy it from Balance Rock instead of Price Chopper. And this is comparing Price Chopper's best prices - if I compared the milk to Organic Valley instead of Price Chopper's Organic brand, then it would be about $4 cheaper to buy from Balance Rock.

Hey, I warned you I was a geek...

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