The following is part of an Organic Journey guest post series, written by Amy a long time helper behind the scenes of Southern Savers.

I feel like I just discovered another secret in this whole eating better for less journey.  Want to know what it is?  Well, I was reading another blogger’s tale of how she saves money eating well and noticed that she bought a huge box of tomatoes.  A box of tomatoes that no family could ever consume before they went bad.  Then later, while I was at my beloved farmer’s market, I noticed a man who had boxes of produce (and he didn’t appear to be buying for a restaurant!)  Another seed was planted into the sieve-like brain of mine.  I also have been gradually noticing that the prices for a box of produce at my farmer’s market are significantly cheaper than the price per pound.  The puzzle piece that put it all together for me happened this weekend though.

We went apple picking and after we picked, we went back to the store to do a little shopping.  There were these ½ bushel bags of apples for $15 ea.  Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t know how to comparison shop from bushels to pounds.  I can, however, be creative in problem solving every now and then though.  One of our friends that went with us works at a gym.  I figured if he lifts weights every day, he could lift that bag of apples and give me a pretty good estimate of how much it weighed.  He estimated that it was between 40-45 lbs of apples!  My husband (who works in construction and thus does some heavy lifting of his own) checked it out as well (per my request, he’s not a doubting Thomas or anything) and concurred that the estimate was right.  Even if it was 40 lbs, that works out to being 37¢/lb!!!  The cheapest I can ever get apples for is 99¢/lb.  That is some major savings!  (full disclosure: It was a 2 hour trip one way with our clan.  So, if you are looking for sheer cost effectiveness, the price of my gas killed that.  But I figure the gas paid for a day of fun memories for our family.)  Here is the problem, our family can’t consume 40 lbs of apples before they go bad.  We could come close, but there would be waste.  And then the lightbulb clicked on.  Maybe one of the keys to major savings in this area is to buy produce in bulk when it is in season and at a great discount, and then preserve it.  Sound simple?  Yes.  Had I totally figured out that this applied to things besides strawberries and peaches?  No.  So, I snagged three of those ginormous bags of apples (in addition to what my kiddos had picked) and started brainstorming ways to preserve these apples.

When I was talking to a dear friend today and excitedly told her about my aha moment, she said that made her think one thing, “WORK!”  I’m not going to lie, it has taken some time and effort to preserve our apples this week, but if you have the right tools, it makes all the difference in the world.  Which leads to the first step. Read More→