Year-Round Farmers Markets Encourage Shoppers to Buy Local

Inside a long corridor of a renovated mill on a cold January morning, a young brown-haired woman slices handmade ricotta and feta cheeses and lays them out on wooden cheese boards. Around her, baskets of fresh bread and homemade pies line rows of tables and locally harvested oysters poke through clusters of ice.

In this file photo,shoppers browse through fresh peppers, apples, tomatoes and greens at the Chicago Farmers Market in Federal Plaza Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2006, in downtown Chicago.

(M. Spencer Green/AP Photo)

Although ice and snow cover the sidewalks outside, the cheerful sounds of a string band warm the makeshift marketplace in Hope Artiste Village in Pawtucket, R.I.

The scene at the Rhode Island Wintertime Farmers' Market is not unlike those found in towns and villages across the country each spring and summer. What's unusual here and in growing numbers of communities is what was once small and seasonal is now bigger and year-round, a response to the growing demand nationwide for locally grown and locally produced foods.

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The movement has spawned a word --locavore --applied to people who try to eat food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius or less to help decrease their environmental impact and support their local economy.

But it goes beyond those who are committed to buying locally to include those who simply want to eat fresh food.

This desire is one of the main reasons farmers' markets are increasing, up some 300 in the two years between August 2006 and 2008, as the total number surpassed 4,500 according to the US Department of Agriculture. And it's helping sustain about 750 farmers' markets that operate between the months of November and March.

The search for local food is what brought Kathrine Lovell and Carmen Grinkis of Barrington, R.I., to the Rhode Island Wintertime Farmers' Market.

"This is keeping us going through winter until we can start growing stuff," says Ms. Lovell, whose reusable shopping bag was filled with short ribs and a pork pie.

In Rhode Island, farmers have been gathering every Saturday since December 2007 to sell winter produce they grow in greenhouses or keep in storage. From December to April, shoppers can purchase fresh produce, live lobsters, baked goods, and grass-fed beef, among other items.