Residents of Sarasota and Manatee Counties looking for farm fresh produce on the go must go to this website…
http://floridasuncoast.locallygrown.net/welcome.
It’s fabulous – an online farmers market. It has everything any other traditional farmers market has – produce, spices, fresh breads, and jams. The prices are comparable to other markets and low compared to the organics found at grocery stores. Here’s my list for this week.
Fifty-cents for an organic zucchini; I pay three-dollars for that at Publix. And my purchases are beautiful – fresh, colorful and crisp.
Not everything on the site is organic, but not everything has to be. I’d much rather buy a non-organic onion from a local farm than an organic onion from Sweetbay. And the process is a cinch. It took me about two-minutes to register and maybe ten-minutes to shop and check-out. I ordered late, so some items were sold out. Still, the selections are varied so I was pleased with what I ended up with. Thanks to regular spinach being sold out, I bought this gorgeous green and purple Okinawa – Handama Spinach instead.
Ordering is open from Friday evenings through Tuesdays at noon, and pick-up is from 4 to 6 pm on Wednesdays. There are a few pick-up locations across Manatee County. The website says there is pick-up in Sarasota, but there’s not. The drop-down box doesn’t offer that option and I asked today to be sure. There isn’t for now, but Sarasotans, I’m sure we could change that with enough orders. The closest pick-up location to Sarasota is Health Park East off SR 70. Take your first right into the parking lot and look for this truck:
The update on the old Community Farmers Market that I went looking for last week in the same parking lot is that it was organized by the owner of the Health Park East complex, and she simply got too busy to keep up with it. So the farmers found a way to keep it going on their own. Great idea!
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