A Farm Market with No Cash Register?
With all of the rain and hot weather we’ve experienced, our farms are bursting with beautiful peppers, peaches, and plums. We’re full to the brim with cucumbers, collards, and corn. Don’t even get us started on zucchini!! Many farmers across the Garden State are excited to take their produce to markets to sell at this time of year, and we strongly encourage our readers to go out and support local farmers! As a nonprofit farm, though, we have a different plan in mind for our harvest.
Throughout the growing season we run Free Farm Markets™ (FFM), which are very similar to regular farm markets except that there is no cashier at the end and the beautiful farm-fresh produce is absolutely free. We strategically partner with organizations located in food deserts – areas geographically defined as lacking access to fresh, affordable, produce (ensuring we are not competing with local farmers) – and share our harvest with our neighbors in need throughout New Jersey and in eastern Pennsylvania through our FFM program.
The goal of the markets is to reintroduce fresh, healthy produce back into communities where a culture around healthy eating is either long forgotten or far out of reach. Because fresh produce is often a higher-priced item to begin with, most of the families in these food desert communities do not have the budget to purchase foods that members of their family might try but choose not to eat because they don’t like them. A study in the ScienceDirect.com journal, “Appetite” found that repeated exposure to different vegetables increased the chances of children in low-income households liking the vegetables. Our FFM produce distribution program, in conjunction with the simple recipes we share, offers families the ability to try new produce items multiple times in simple and delicious ways in order to help promote healthy eating through enjoyment of a variety of produce items offering different nutrients.
This year we are excited to expand our FFM program, making it bigger than ever, and we need your help to make it possible. We have an amazing team of volunteers who deliver the produce in their vehicles from our Pittstown farm to our FFM locations. It’s a wonderful way to reach across the table, share healthy produce, and forge new friendships with the folks at the markets – and you might even get some new recipe ideas while you’re at it! If you’re interested in getting involved, please learn more and sign up here.
