Where are the peaches at your local producers farmers market?
Patrons of area farmers markets that rely entirely on local producers selling only what they grow themselves (the North Union Markets and Countryside Conservancy Markets, for instance) may have already noticed the lack of certain fruits, such as peaches, at these markets. Perhaps the farmers have shared the reason: a hard freeze back at the beginning of the year wiped out the entire crop.
Beth Knorr, the Countryside Conservancy market director, sent out an email to patrons explaining the situation and why the market is allowing fruit from outside the immediate area to be sold on a limited basis. She says this does not portend lifting their producer-only rule on a general basis.
Here’s the text of her message:
As many of our regular customers know, our region’s orchards were hit particularly hard by this winter’s Polar Vortex. While being a producer’s only market is very important to us, balancing the needs of our customers (as well as our vendors) to buy local food and to make a living respectively is equally important. After a lot of internal debate about the best route to take for our fruit vendors who were affected by the loss of their entire stone fruit crop, we decided to allow them to bring some in from other areas in order to serve our customers who still want to support those farms, as well as purchase some of summer’s staples.
We make exceptions to our rules after a great deal of thought and deliberation: are we helping to create unrealistic expectations with our customers? Are we starting down a slippery slope of bringing these items in? How can we support those farms that had such a huge crop failure? What message will this send to our other growers? How are other markets responding? We try to look at these situations from as many angles as possible before making a decision. In this instance, we felt it best served everyone by allowing our orchards to bring in fruit from our region, and to clearly communicate with customers where it is coming from. Our rules are still in force for non stone-fruit items, and hopefully this winter will prove kinder to our orchardists and they will be able to bring their own fruits next year.