During our show with Missie April\u00a0 we talked about asking your farmer questions about the produce you are buying.\u00a0 I thought it may be helpful to get some specific questions to ask your farmer at a market.<\/p>\n
1. Do you grow <\/strong>everything<\/strong><\/em> you sell?<\/strong> Ideally, the answer will be yes.\u00a0 However, many farm markets purchase and resell some items, if your farmer can’t or won’t tell you what he or she\u00a0grows, that’s a bad sign!\u00a0 If your farmer is willing to tell you which products are grown there at the farm, you can at least make\u00a0an informed choice to purchase local food and avoid the items that are being resold.\u00a0 Those items will\u00a0likely not be as fresh and flavorful anyway.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0Do you use chemical pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers?<\/strong> The answer should be no.\u00a0 Ask what methods are used to\u00a0manage pests, disease, and soil fertility.\u00a0 A good organic farmer, if they have the time, will be happy to talk shop with you.\u00a0 Enthusiasm for discussing these issues is a good sign, unless the farmer is very busy working.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 Do you grow heirloom varieties?\u00a0 Do you grow non-GMO\u00a0crops?<\/strong> The answer should be yes to heirlooms, no to GMO’s.\u00a0 This shows that the farmer is working to preserve diversity and sustainability.\u00a0\u00a0If\u00a0your farmer seems evasive on this subject, ask him or her where they buy their seed.\u00a0 You can follow up with research on the seed company to be sure\u00a0they sell only non-GMO seed.\u00a0 This is an extra step, but an important one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During our show with Missie April\u00a0 we talked about asking your farmer questions about the produce you are buying.\u00a0 I thought it may be helpful to get some specific questions to ask your farmer at a market. 1. Do you grow everything you sell? Ideally, the answer will be yes.\u00a0 However, many farm markets purchase<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,72,457,63],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[3107,2890,3106,3113,3110,700,3108,3109,3112,3111,1854],"class_list":["post-958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-food","category-nutrition-diet-supplements","category-wellness"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22086,"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions\/22086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fireitupwithcj.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}