By Staff
opportunities to buy locally
With the official opening of the 2009 season of Saturday Market set for Saturday, there comes opportunities for area residents to help local farmers and other local people who sell their produce and goods at Saturday Market.
With the area in the grip of a recession, what better way to help those farmers and producers than for the rest of us to buy what we need from them? Instead of buying a pint of strawberries from a grocery store that probably got its supply from somewhere else other than a local grower, buy a pint or two from a Beaufort County grower. Instead of buying tomatoes, onions and cucumbers that came from outside Beaufort County, or the state for that matter, buy most of the makings for a good salad from a grower in Terra Ceia or Chocowinity.
The money spent at Saturday Market circulates throughout Beaufort County. The farmers who grow produce for Saturday Market will spend some of the money they make from their sales with local agricultural-supply businesses. The money made from sales at one Saturday Market may be used be a grower to take his or her family out to dinner at a local restaurant or take the children to see a show at the Turnage Theater.
Saturday Market, with its Farmers Market component every Saturday and its Art Expo the second Saturday of each month during the Saturday Market season, allows area growers and artists to showcase their talents, whether those talents be in the form of growing quality produce, making extraordinary jams, relishes and salsas or creating works of art.
Petals &Produce is the first Beaufort County agricultural concern to participate in the Community Supported Agriculture program, according to the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service’s center in Beaufort County. An article in the April 22 edition of the Daily News provided details about the program.
It’s a program that more local farmers should at least considering joining.
That program and Saturday Market are just two ways area folks can support area farmers and producers.
And in this economy, they can use all the local support they can get.
It’s all right to think globally, but it never hurts to buy locally.