Each week, The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird and I head to our local market to collect boxes of discarded produce. All of the produce you see above was sitting on the grocers shelf less than an hour or two before we came to pick it up. The produce we bring home has either been deemed damaged, past it’s due date or was bruised.
About four months ago, I walked into our local market and asked if they gave away their produce “scraps”. I told them we had a coop full of chickens, and that I was willing to come every week at a designated time to pick up whatever they had from that mornings shelf pull. At first they were a little hesitant saying they had had people ask before, but that the people would pick up the produce for a week or two and then they would stop coming. Leaving the produce department with boxes of rotting produce.
So they stopped giving it away.
Obviously I convinced them otherwise.
Each week the produce we bring home varies, sometimes we will get a ton of greens, other times we will score a bunch of tropical fruit, but most weeks there is a nice assorment.
The Girl and I simply sort through the boxes, and divide it up. Chickens, People, Compost.
The cool thing about getting 4-5 boxes of free fruit and veggies each week, {that would have otherwise been thrown away} is that we get to feast on items like pineapples, melons and corn. Which are all things we normally can’t or don’t have the space {corn} to grow.
After sorting through all 4 boxes, this is the produce we decided to keep for ourselves. Not bad. Not bad at all. I’m not sure what the retail vaule on the loot was, but I’ll take free scraps any day of the week.
Have YOU tried this?
Too embarrassed to ask?
Well, I learned a long, long time ago, that the worst thing anyone can ever do is tell you no. So why not? Go ahead. Be brave, and get yourself some free produce.
To see what else I’ve brought home over the past few months? Check out the stories below.
Keep fruits and veggies fresh longer with the Progressive International Lettuce Keeper
See more Fruit and Vegetable Keepers
Lissa says
After such quiet boxes last week, I am overflowing this week! Lots of great stuff and a “newbie” item – golden beets.
18 red bell peppers
4 medium leeks
4 ears corn
4 roma tomatoes
4.5lbs strawberries
6oz blueberries
1 artichoke
1 pear
2 golden beets
1 sprig of broccoli
Plus, in my side business of medical pet care I just started a pet-sitting job yesterday where the people are gone for 2 weeks. They offered to give me a bunch of produce from their little garden and fridge – yes please!
6 ears corn
2 tomatoes
1lbs green beans (garden)
2cups snow peas (garden)
2 grapefruit
Misty says
You have an amazing amount of strawberries by now, and I believe you are going more, are you ever worried about have to many strawberries?
Lanie says
I finally asked for scraps at our local market. All I got were some outer cabbage leaves, but it was a whole box and our chickens loved them!
Lanie
Lizzy says
I’ve asked at 2 different markets and have been told no both times. Hoping that somewhere, someone has a yes for me 🙂
Mavis says
Keep trying. Hopefully you’ll get a break. 🙂
Penelope says
HI, I found my way over here through the Prudent Homemaker.
Well, I did it. You said to so I tried it. I’ll try to keep the story short. I had to pick up some eggs and ice cream for a birthday (I’m keeping shopping to a minimum) so I asked the quirky produce grandpa about it. Got told they used to give to helping hands until the legal dept got involved and shut it down. Now it goes to trash only. I said I was using it for compost and the neighbor that has chickens (truth, unless something is awesome… compost costs so much money!). He said if I showed up before 8 a.m. I could get stuff.
I got there around 7 this morning and the setup is that everything goes into large rolling trash bins. So they handed me a couple boxes and told me I could get what I wanted. I just took from the top, assuming this was the start of a great future relationship. Mostly I got lettuce leaves and corn trimmings. But I also got a 10 lb bag of potatoes to go through, a couple heads of cabbage, 2 smashed bananas, a couple beets, 4 corn on the cob, 8 tomatoes (on the vine type, one was bad so the whole vine had to go) And I got some wobbly broccoli.
The only downer really is that we also found shards of glass. But I think I found the culprit. A group of collards was in there and had the glass in it. Lucky no one was hurt, but I will now use the gloves they offered instead of digging bare handed.
All in all I think it was a good start. I’ve already dug a trench where we’ve harvested potatoes and covered the composting stuff. I’ll ask the neighbor if she wants stuff for her chickens next time around.
And we get fresh potatoes for cheesy potato soup AND hash browns. Life is good. Thanks for the idea!
p.s. I have another grocer in town…. I might check them out as well. Seems a shame to waste perfectly good composting items if nothing else.
Mavis says
Good Job! You have to start somewhere. Cheesy potato soup and hash browns sound good to me. 🙂