Where to Find Local Farmer’s Markets and Pick-Your-Own Farms
Filed Under: Do It Yourself, Susatainable Living on July 20, 2009
It’s just about that time of year where harvest is ready, farmers markets are starting up, and the bounty of this year’s crop is ready for your family to enjoy. If you’re like me, you’re eagerly watching your garden overflow it’s boundaries as plants spread out to gather up the maximum available sunlight. Fruits and veggies are getting larger and larger, beginning to ripen, and making your mouth water just to look at them.
Well, this is also the time of year when we start thinking about the local farmer’s markets (most of them start in late-July or early August). We’re getting our jars together, counting the number of lids we have for them, cleaning out the pressure canner and bottling pots… Getting ready for the big times a-comin’.
If you don’t already know where to go or if you’d rather not go where everyone else does, you might be able to skip the well-advertised farmer’s markets and pick-your-own farms and instead find the less well-known ones in your area. My wife and I did just that this weekend, checking the phone book and findind some sites on the Internet for searching.
We were specifically targeting fruit trees for this hunt, but we found a lot of vegetable and even livestock feed farms that are also either pick-your-own or hold on-site markets for their crops. We made a few phone calls and will have busy days starting next month, when harvests begin to come in. Most of these places are small enough that they’re more than happy to take our phone number and give us a call when they’ve got some good stuff ready for us to come and get.
In the process of looking for these places, we found three extremely useful online tools. The first is the most obvious: just Google it.
We did a few Google searches for “fruit trees, Cheyenne, WY” to see what we came up with (not much). We tried “farmer’s market, Cheyenne, WY” with better results, but mostly just information on the ones we already know about. Trying “local farm, Cheyenne, WY” was much better and we found a place not far from us in Carpenter, WY that has several types of vegetables we can go get later in August. They’ll give us a call. They also put us in line with their neighbor for hay, which we need for our shelter animals (mules, horses, sheep and goats).
We also found two great websites for hunting down farmer’s markets and pick-your-own (and more) nationally.
LocalHarvest.org is a great resource with a lot of nice information. We found a vegetable farm, three organic/pasture-fed livestock farms, and lots of other great stuff. We also found a local co-op farmer’s market we didn’t know about that happens every Saturday starting August 1.
PickYourOwn.org is not as fancy or well-built as Local Harvest, but it’s definitely a great place. Despite obviously running on a shoestring, PickYourOwn has a lot of great information. We found the same vegetable farm we found on Local Harvest, but also found an orchard just over the Colorado border (not far from us) and a small family operation that sells jams, jellies, and pickled veggies. Awesome!
So check out the resources you’ve got in your area and see what you can do to come up with great fresh foods, information, and even some you can put away in storage!
Eat well, locally.
I wish the vege farms in Singapore are not so “out of the way”! It’s very difficult to ascertain if farms here are organic or not.
Thanks for the reviews of the farms!
Ya, I know what you mean. I’ve never lived in a true “city” here before, so I can’t say I’ve never been in a position to not have access to fresh farm foods. But even Los Angeles, CA has a huge farmer’s market and an easy 50 mile drive gets you far enough out of the valley to get to produce stands.
So it’s not nearly as difficult in most parts of the US to find fresh food–organics might be a little more work, but it’s popular enough that they’re common.