Things You Should Know about Farm Stands

As I was working planting the seedlings this afternoon, I was reminded of the woman we had in the shop last season. We got talking about another local farm stand, and how they already had their corn for sale. I hated to have to tell her, that  just because she was in a farm stand, does not mean that farm grows that food. I told her that they brought it up from Boston. She was both shocked and amazed.
Imagine…you walk into a farm stand. Before you stands all this beautiful fruit and vegetables. You assume, since it is a farm stand, that all the food was grown there.
You would be wrong.
Many farm stands buy wholesale, and most of these wholesalers have no real way of knowing where there produce is coming from. Some of the other local farms do buy from these wholesalers. We know this, because you can’t help miss the truck pulling into their yards. We called this same wholesaler, because we thought this we be a good way to expand what we sell, without having to till several new gardens. They simply informed us that their trucks “go to Boston to pick up their produce and have no real way of knowing even if it came from Boston”.
We thought this was kind of sad. All these people going into the farm stand along the road, and being fooled. Some farms disclose what is not “grown on their farm”, while others just lead people to believe it did.

We, here at Cloverleaf Farm, sell only produce and fruits that we grow here on the farm.  We do have plans on buying wholesale in the future, but you can be assured it will be from a local farm only. We will not buy from wholesalers who bring their stuff up from Boston, just so you can have corn a few weeks earlier. To us, this is not good business. To us, this is not eating local.
Eat Local, Eat Healthy!