I finally sent in my registration for the meat CSA on Friday, so I will now be picking up 4 lbs ground beef, 6 lbs beef roasts/steaks/occasional bacon & hot dogs, 2 chickens, and 2 dozen eggs about a mile from my house every month through June. Yesterday I attended a traditional foods fair and picked up 2 chickens, 3 lbs ground beef, and one sirloin steak to tide us over until the first delivery. Now that I've got that locked in, I've been looking at bigger bulk orders to see whether that will be a better approach once the 3 months runs out. I've found 3 farms between 40-100 miles away that each do rotational grazing for their animals and deliver locally (although if I was picking up 1/4 cow, I'd be willing to go 50+ miles once if it was cheaper). The closest one is considerably more expensive than the other two and the one whose CSA I'm now in is the cheapest. I'd love to bring the boys to visit one of the farms this summer to really see where food comes from. My veggie CSA (200 miles away) sells meat through a partnering farm, but it's more expensive than any of the other options and I don't think they sell more than 50 lb packages. As far as I can tell, 1/4 cow translates into 6-3 lb roasts, 16 1.5 lb steaks, 45 lbs hamburger, 3-2 lb short ribs, 5 lbs stew meat, and 2 lbs stir fry meat, plus soup bones. If I bought one every year, that averages 8 lbs beef monthly, so the meat CSA gives more beef. The cheapest chickens and eggs are conveniently also from the meat CSA farm and cost $37/month. Splitting the cost of 1/4 cow monthly is about $40. So it would be $77/month instead of $95/mo for the CSA (but only have 3/4 of the beef). I'd rather have more chickens than extra beef, so I could get a third monthly chicken (an extra 5 lbs meat rather than the 2 lbs beef) for a total of $92/mo. I know the veggie CSA offers beef in May, November, and January, so July might be a bad time to try to get a cow -- I should find out how that works. And I think that if I want chicken year-round without the CSA, I'll have to buy them by fall because a bunch of farms mentioned spring-fall chicken sales. We got a chest freezer last summer and 1/4 cow takes up 4 cubic feet of freezer -- I should figure out how big mine is. It does look like the CSA isn't a total rip-off, I just want a more chicken-y blend of meat. (They offer pork and lamb if desired and I said I'd like occasional pork instead of additional beef roasts/steaks).
I've been going through cookbooks because no matter which option we go with, we'll be eating less meat than we used to (5-6 times a week down to maybe 4). If anybody has great, cheap recipes to share, please let me know. My lettuce seedlings really look like lettuce, which I find exciting. They're been hanging outside in the cold frame on sunny days for a few days and I plan to put those, along with sugar snap pea and spinach seeds, in the garden late this week. After getting 6 inches snow on Monday, it was in the 60's for most of the week and we're now on day 1 of 3 days expected rain, so the last bit of snow melted today. My next-door neighbor to the south had to cut 2 big silver maples down on Friday because of foundation issues, which is sad except one was blocking a couple hours' daylight over my garden, so I'm a little less freaked out about whether they'll have enough sun once the trees bloom (I think they'll get full sun after 1pm, which is 6-7 hours now and 8-9 hours in June). 
I planted the second bunch of indoor seedlings on Thursday (24 more lettuce seeds, 12 marigolds, and 18 roma, slicing, and cherry tomatoes) and as of this afternoon, 25 of the 32 lettuces and marigolds had sprouted, yay! By mid-May, there should be plenty of salad to eat, between the garden and the veggie CSA. I'm thinking a lot about food lately.
