Is Local Farm Meat Too Expensive? Let's Do the Math.

We hear it sometimes: "Your prices are high." And on the surface, we understand why someone might think that. A $33 chicken or $10.75/lb ground beef looks different than what you see at the grocery store. But we'd like to invite you to look a little deeper — because when you calculate what you're actually paying per meal, the numbers tell a very different story.

The real question isn't whether our prices are high. It's whether the alternative is actually cheaper — once you account for what you're getting, and what you're not.

The $33 Chicken: A Week of Meals

Our whole chickens run about $33 for a 4-pound bird. Here's what that gets you:

• Sunday: Roast chicken dinner

• Monday: Leftover chicken tacos or a salad

• Tuesday: Chicken soup made from the carcass (this alone makes two meals)

That's 4–5 meals from one bird — which works out to roughly $6.60–$8.25 per meal for the protein. Compare that to a restaurant meal ($15–25+), or even a Whole Foods organic chicken ($25–30, with less transparency about how it was raised). Our chicken is pasture-raised, regeneratively farmed, and grown right here in the Willamette Valley.

Ground Beef at $10.75/lb: Two Meals for Under $6 Each

One pound of our ground beef makes two solid meals — a pasta sauce one night, tacos the next. That's about $5.38 per meal for the protein. "Natural" ground beef at a chain grocery store runs $7–9/lb too, but commodity beef comes with many problems from the quality and source of the product to the way it affects our entire food web. Our beef comes from cattle raised on pasture, without synthetic inputs, by a family who lives here.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Here's how a sample weekly basket compares:

Item	Deck Family Farm	Typical Grocery Store
Whole chicken (4 lb)	$33.00	$20–30 (non-organic)
Ground beef (1 lb)	$10.75	$7–9 ("natural")
Eggs (1 dozen)	$9.00	$5–8 (cage-free)
Raw whole milk (1/2 gal)	$12.00	Not available in stores*
Seasonal vegetables	Farm-fresh, picked to order	Days old, shipped from afar

* Raw milk cannot legally be sold in most grocery stores. It's only available direct from licensed farms like ours.

A Sample Week on ~$101

Here's what one person's weekly basket looks like with real prices from our store:

Product	Qty	Price
Whole chicken (4 lb)	1	$33.00
Ground beef	2 lbs	$21.50
Raw whole milk	1/2 gal	$12.00
Pasture-raised eggs	1 dozen	$9.00
Fresh-baked bread	1 loaf	$8.40
Carrots	2 lbs	$5.60
Beets	2 lbs	$3.64
Broccoli rapini	1 bunch	$3.50
Pears	3	$4.20
WEEKLY TOTAL		$101.34

That's a full week of protein-rich, vegetable-forward eating for one person — with ingredients you can trust — for about $100.

What You're Really Paying For

When you buy from Deck Family Farm, you're not just buying food. You're buying:

• Meat raised on pasture, without synthetic hormones or antibiotics

• Regenerative farming practices that build soil health and sequester carbon

• Raw milk from cows that live as cows should — outdoors, on grass

• Vegetables and fruit picked fresh and sold directly to you — no middleman, no cold storage

• A local farm family in Junction City that you can actually visit

The real question isn't whether our prices are high. It's whether the alternative is actually cheaper — once you account for what you're getting, and what you're not.

Ready to try it for yourself or recommend to a friend?

Shop our full weekly availability at fullfarmcsa.deckfamilyfarm.com