Nature's Garden Organic produce and fruit delivered to your door.

The bounty of fruits and vegetables on my island.

I’m way ahead of Jamie Oliver and his Food Revolution! (Love him and his ideas, by-the-way.) Back around Christmas time I purchased a Groupon which gave me a substantial discount and gift certificate from a vendor called Nature’s Garden. I redeemed it a couple of weeks ago and a few days later a magic box showed up on my doorstep containing this delicious assortment of organic fruits and vegetables:

  • 4 pears
  • 4 apples
  • 2 oranges
  • 4 kiwi
  • 4 sweet potatoes
  • 2 tomatoes
  • 6 green onions
  • 1 zucchini
  • 1 stalk of celery
  • red swiss chard
  • a huge head of green leaf lettuce

Have you used Groupon? It’s a shared buying experience based upon your location which allows groups of people to purchase various items or experiences at a substantial discount. I was thrilled with this Groupon experience! It was called a “small box of fruits and vegetables”. Not all the items came locally, but they do attempt to purchase as much as possible in season from local farmers so I imagine there would be fewer items from Florida and other states. One fantastic thing I noticed was that although some of the items had organic stickers from other states, none of the produce was from another country. That makes a huge difference to me in freshness, flavor, and farming standards. Receiving such a variety of items caused me to try new recipes and use our bounty in every way possible. My kids like fruits and vegetables and were excited to try something like kiwi…something that’s not hard to find, but I don’t usually purchase. As a result I feel like we got our money’s worth out of the Groupon and the additional health bonus. I’m still debating the worth of a full price box, but I have to admit it is a wonderful service.

In our local area a co-op has developed over the past few years. I’m tempted to participate after seeing how this put a plentiful supply of produce in our home for ready use. I looked around and found several sources for either co-op situations, local farm services, or farmer’s market. I encourage you to take a look at your options. With summer drawing near there is sure to be good local produce to enjoy.

  • Foodzie is like the Etsy of original food products. It is an online farmer’s market where small producers can sell their unique goods.
  • Nature’s Garden Delivered – The service I used for this Groupon.
  • Local Harvest provides a searchable directory of resources like markets and co-ops.
  • USDA’s Farmer Market Search
  • Farmer’s Market website which provide a full directory and a nicely written blog.
  • “Organic Produce Delivery” Google results, perhaps you can add your state or location to this search and find just the perfect situation for you.
  • Visit my friends at Well Fed Family and also, The Grain Girl. These are college friends of mind who have really done their research. Through their blog posts and facebook encouragement they have been able to demystify some of the confusion behind healthy cooking.

So back to Jamie Oliver. Did any of you watch the show last week? What did you think? My eight year old son keeps saying, “I just can’t believe they didn’t know how to name those vegetables!” and I think that was the shocker for me in last week’s episode. I love that teacher who took it upon herself to teach vegetable recognition to her children. That information may never be on a standardized test, but it is certainly important for living! It’s nice to see passion about something important in the news instead of celebrity gossip.