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A lot of people advise getting fresh produce and other ingredients at a farmer's market, where you can find items that are local and high quality, and have various other appealing attributes (such as being organic, or grass-fed, or humane, or hormone-free, or heirloom, or whatnot).

However, since many farmer's markets aren't open all the time, and there are different kinds of farmer's markets, finding one can be tricky.

Are there any directories of farmer's markets? What other strategies are there for finding farmer's markets when you're in a new area other than asking around? Do the different kinds of farmer's markets (like the large, permanent kind) have different names that might inform a better search query?

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nohat
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For the US, try Local Harvest. They list farms, farmer's markets, CSA, etc, and try to keep track of what sort of things are sold from each place (fruit, meat, etc.)

update : other places to ask around : the local farm extension office or your local farm bureau. When I lived in Europe, it was easy -- they were large enough that everyone knew where they were, and it seemed that there was at least one per town, and there could be a dozen for larger cities.

Joe
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    I found our farmer's market by looking into a CSA, and noticing that one of their pickup points was listed as "farmer's market". Turned out to be literally ten minutes down the road -- just on a street I'd never travelled before. – Yamikuronue Sep 08 '12 at 12:48
  • @Yamikuronue : Local Harvest also lists CSAs. (as those might also be something difficult to find). – Joe Sep 08 '12 at 12:53
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@nohat, since your profile says you are from San Jose, CA:

Most of the Farmer's Markets in the SF Bay are are actually used by real farmers, i.e. there is typically no middleman. Which is good for you. Further, since these are typically small farmers, even if these farmers are not all "certified organic", they usually are non-spray-pesticide using farmers.

joyjit
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How do I find things when I'm new to a region? Besides the Internet? (I would imagine that Google is your friend here.)

If you can't find a local Farmer's Market association, try local farmer's cooperatives, food co-ops, University extension bureaus, whoever organizes the nearest "summer crop festival" (they're just about everywhere these days), local orchards... oh, an country/regional summer/fall fairs. They might not be associated directly with it, but SOMEONE there would know what's going on in your area.

Kerrizor
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  • I know we're not SO, but this seems to still apply: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5280/embrace-the-non-googlers That said, this seems like the kind of info that would get out of date rather quickly. – Brendan Long Jan 26 '11 at 03:55