During the long isolation of Covid’s run I got used to ordering from Target online and driving up to pick up my order. I still use that service, and this morning I noticed that Target in Virginia has doubled their number of drive-up parking spots. Many stores have adapted in this same way—you can get your groceries delivered curbside or pick up your prescriptions at a drive-through. Farmers markets are adapting, too, by adding online ordering/payment and pick up from your car at the market. In Minnesota, Renewing the Countryside sought and received a multi-year USDA grant to “fortify and multiply” the online ordering and easy pick-up options at a number of farmers markets. The online ordering facet of a farmers market is called a “hub.” Hubs aggregate market products from several vendors and get them ready for pickup at a market.
Virginia Market Square is one of these new hubs. The Virginia Farmers Market Hub managed by Kristine Jonas takes online orders and payment through the Open Food Network platform. You can shop here: https://openfoodnetwork.net/virginiafarmersmarkethub/shop. In northern Minnesota, the Grand Rapids and Aitkin markets use this platform too. They have been developing for a longer time, so their offerings are numerous. In Virginia, we’re just getting started. Bear Creek Acres (Embarrass) sells pastured pork through the hub and Snapshot Farms (Hibbing) is selling free range chicken; all the meat is frozen, of course. Alfred Smith’s Farm (Hibbing) sells produce and soon, Early Frost Farms (Embarrass) will also offer produce. You can even buy plants online grown by Gardens and Gems (Soudan). Farmers deliver the goods to Virginia Market Square on market day and buyers can pick up from the big green tent with the “Hub” logo from 5-6pm on Thursdays. The pick-up tent is right on 9th Avenue West just north of the entrance to the market parking lot. The Hub is promoting retail sales to individuals at this point but will eventually offer wholesale purchasing to grocery stores and other businesses.
There are several reasons for folks to prefer the online ordering and drive-up option. Maybe you have limited mobility and walking the farmers market is too much for you. Maybe you work until 5 and can’t get to the farmers market until late. Maybe you are homebound and want to shop online and send your spouse or relative to pick up your order. Or maybe you just don’t like the hustle and bustle of the farmers market. It’s easy to get started—just open an account at the link above so that you can shop and pay by credit card online or pay with cash at pick-up. Then shop from Thursday at 2pm till the following Tuesday at 2pm for pickup at the farmers market on Thursday.
There are plenty of reasons why market customers might prefer shopping online, but what about farmers? I’ve written seventy-six of these articles and I’ve only interviewed two farmers who don’t have off-farm jobs. Farming in northern Minnesota is a labor of love and dedication in addition to off-farm full time work for most. The United States Department of Agriculture says that, nationwide, 64.4% of the total income for farm families is off-farm income. I suspect that is higher in northern Minnesota. The most common reasons for working off farm are health insurance and retirement benefits. Those are compelling reasons to participate in the off-farm labor market.
In St. Louis County, the US Census of Agriculture reports 779 farms. Over half, 413 of those farms have annual sales under $5,000 per year and 73% have annual sales under $10,000. We don’t do thousand-acre field corn and soybean farms here. We do what the USDA calls “specialty crop” farming and small livestock operations. We don’t have confined animal feeding operations. Farm animals on the Range are mostly pastured or free-range. St. Louis County farms are 48% cropland, 12% pasture, and 40% woodland, wetland, or other. About 10% of our farms use no-till and cover cropping methods to build soil health. And only 29% of St. Louis County farms are larger than 179 acres. So, we’re not your typical large commodity-farming area. Most of what is produced on local farms is food for human consumption except for hay for livestock.
The USDA reports about 5,000 meat chickens and another 5,500 layers and pullets, about 10,000 cattle, only three hundred hogs, about six hundred sheep, three hundred turkeys and 1,000 horses in St. Louis County. In contrast, Henry County Illinois where I spent childhood summers on my relatives’ farm has over 90% of its farmland in crops, mostly corn and soybeans, and reports 21,000 cattle and 125,000 hogs, mostly in confined feed lots. So, farming up north is a different kind of farming for sure. That puts us in a position to buy locally grown meat, eggs and produce from small family farms where we can meet the farmer at an area farmers market. And now we can order online, too, shopping on each farm’s market page, browsing photos of their products, and driving up to a farmers market to pick up our order.
Try it! https://openfoodnetwork.net/virginiafarmersmarkethub/shop To get started, click “login” and then “sign up.” We’ll see you at the pick-up tent on Thursdays 5-6 at Virginia Market Square, 11 S. 9th Ave West at the Kline-Cuppoletti Park Facility on Silver Lake.