Kingston Farmers' Market news

With the Kingston Farmers’ Market underway, I am slowly adjusting to that old familiar routine of waking up at the crack of dawn to gather vegetables to sell at our booth. It makes the workweek a little longer but it’s worth it just to hang out at the port, listen to a little music and socialize. I decided for this article, I wouldn’t waste any time jabbering about such nonsensical things as dead frogs in the road but instead to give some useful information on why you should buy local and organic food. After browsing through the Web I found numerous top 10 lists and after compiling them, this is what I came up with.

Top 10 reasons to buy local food:

1. Support local farmers and the community. In an era when sustainable farmers are struggling to survive, farmer’s market profits, which go straight into the grower’s pocket, help keep small farms alive and dollars in the local economy.

2. Taste the difference and reap the benefits. Farmers’ markets offer the freshest food around, usually hours from the field. Recent studies show that once picked, produce quickly loses nutrition. With no long distances to travel or chemicals used to prolong crispness, this food is as fresh as it gets.

3. Connect with your community. Festive and lively, farmers’ markets are gathering places where you bump into friends and meet local farmers and artisans face to face.

4. Know where your food comes from. A regular trip to the farmers’ market is one of the best ways to reconnect with where your food comes from. When you buy direct from a farmer, you are re-establishing the connection between the eater and the grower.

5. Enjoy the season. The food you buy at the farmers’ market is always seasonal. It is fresh and delicious and reflects the truest flavors.

6. Get a better understanding about the message behind sustainable agriculture, organic farming, and healthy living.

7. Local food preserves genetic diversity. Local farmers tend to grow a diverse number of foods, many which are heirloom varieties. You’ll find they not only have excellent flavor but also provide for a long season of harvest.

8. Support a clean environment. Food in the U.S. travels an average of 1,500 miles to get to your plate. All this shipping uses large amounts of natural resources, contributes greatly to pollution and creates excess trash with extra packaging. Conventional agriculture also uses many more resources than sustainable methods, resulting in the pollution of land and water with toxic by-products. Food at the farmers’ market is transported shorter distances and grown using methods that minimize the impact on the earth.

9. Support GMO-free foods. While corporations are taking great strides in trying to monopolize the seed industry, their bio-engineered produce, or genetically modified organisms (GMO), are increasingly becoming a topic of extreme health risks, not only to humans but also to the planet as a whole. Farmer’s markets support GMO-free, organic and heirloom produce.

10. Local food is about the future. You have probably enjoyed driving out into the country and appreciating the lush fields of crops, the meadows of wild flowers and the picturesque red barns. When you buy locally grown food, you are doing something proactive about preserving the agricultural landscape. By supporting a local farmer today, we can help ensure that there will be farms in our community tomorrow.

There are dozens more reasons to shop local when possible but I’ll let you ponder that thought. In the meantime I’ll get back to planting and maybe we’ll see you down at the farmers’ market!

For more information on the Kingston and Hansville farmers’ markets, go to www.kingstonfarmersmarket.com. The Kingston Farmers’ Market runs 9 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Saturdays through mid-October in Mike Wallace Park at the Port of Kingston Marina. The Hansville Farmers’ Market runs 3-6 p.m. Wednesdays May 10-Sept. 27 in the parking lot at the Hansville Grocery & Provision Co. store.

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