I wanted to write this post because I recently watched a documentary and found a bunch of cool people making Reels about farming on Instagram and it made me think that maybe we need a list of ways to support our local farmers other than buying my books and waiting for me to donate once a year every year, so behold the list!

• Shop at your local farmer’s markets – take note that these are NOT always on Saturday mornings. There may be ones on Tuesdays or Thursdays or even Wednesdays in your area. You should be able to search for them on the internet, but you can also keep your eyes peeled when driving around on main street. Your neighbors might also know where the farmers are hanging out. https://www.ams.usda.gov/local-food-directories/farmersmarkets
• If you can’t make it to the local markets at whatever specified time and day they have planned to be out there – try CSA’s. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Most models are set up where you pay a subscription fee monthly and the farmer will bring you a basket of whatever is growing on the farm each week. It’s pretty cool and is sometimes delivered to your door. Some farmers have pickup days and locations set up, too. A good website to find CSAs is https://www.localharvest.org/
• Volunteer at local farms. You’ll not only learn about where your food comes from, but most farmers will send you home with some goodies before you leave. There are a lot of farmers around that would love some help and would love to spend time educating members of the public about farming. There’s a great one in Maryland called First Fruits Farm that my husband and I have volunteered at before.
• Watch movies about small farms to learn about them and some of the profits goes to the farmers as royalties! I’ll make a separate post including some great small farming-related movies.

Less and less people are staying in farming. Without farmers we won’t have clothes on our backs, food in our bellies, or other nice things. Everything from cotton to trees to proteins are all farmed by someone.

I hope you have fun and learn a lot on your journey to support small farmers!