I know a farmer who sells ALL his grain fed, no hormone (but not organic, since not all his pastures are certifiable) beef and buffalo and some pork and free range chickens/turkeys this way. I just wish this guy lived close enough for me to buy my eggs from him. I love when I pick up my meat and can have a dozen or so of brown farm eggs.

Once or twice a year (saving up for it), I’ll buy a quarter of beef and 30 pounds or so of poultry. It’s already packaged by the custom cutter and ready to just pop into the freezer. You tell the butcher what roast and steak cuts you want and the rest is VERY LEAN ground beef and/or stew meat. He also processes for hunters, so sometimes I can get venison or beef/venison ground meat or summer sausage. You get stew bones if you want them (you pay for ‘hanging weight’ – so you’ve paid for them, but they take up a lot of space in the freezer, so I don’t take all of the ones that I’m due).

Check it out. Some places even deliver!

1) Grow your own from seed (an iffy proposition, since building a garden is not cheap);
2) Shop at ethnic grocery stores, which sometimes are cheaper than mainline stores (sometimes not: ghetto stores often jack up prices because large numbers of customers have no cars and so can’t drive to the competition);
3) Shop at farmer’s markets (not cheaper in my part of the world, but apparently in some parts of the country they are);
4) Raid the dumpsters behind grocery stores when staffers throw out produce. Grocers will toss perfectly good produce for no other reason than that it’s been on the shelf for a day or two.

Unopened bags of flour & cornmeal, I figure, can be wrapped tight in plastic grocery bags and kept in the freezer.