This year’s National Farmers Market Week is August 6-12, and Illinois Farmers Market Association (ILFMA) joins markets from across the country in celebrating the positive impacts farmers markets have. Farmers markets provide access to delicious, nutritious locally produced food, support…
June is National Dairy Month, and our Buy Fresh Buy Local Illinois article highlights two of our state’s outstanding sustainable dairy farms: Marcoot Jersey Creamery in Greenville and Kilgus Farmstead in Fairbury. No two farms are exactly alike. So if…
There was a popular song in the 1960s that starts “Let me tell you ‘bout the birds and the bees, and the flowers and the trees...”. Well, it’s finally spring, so Buy Fresh Buy Local Illinois is here to tell…
It is well known that farmers of color are under-represented in the ranks of our nation’s farmers. But in recent years, a growing number of Black, Asian, and Hispanic people have joined the overall young farmers movement and are experiencing…
What is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)? It is a system in which a farm sells its products by subscription to local consumers, most of whom who purchase prepaid shares in the farm's output that they receive periodically throughout the growing…
Don’t you just love the aroma of artisan bread, fresh and warm from the bakery or your home oven. Makes you want to eat it right away, by itself or with some local creamery butter. And increasingly, that artisan bread…
National Farmers Market Week — August 7-13 this year — celebrates the role that the more than 300 Illinois farmers markets and the more than 8,000 markets nationwide play in helping build a better food system and supporting local economies.…
For generations, most restaurants have obtained the ingredients for the meals they serve their customers from wholesalers and distributors, and more often than not, those ingredients had traveled hundreds if not thousands of miles to get to diners’ plates. But…
Illinois consumers have lots of local dairy options There is hardly a more pastoral scene than a field full of grazing dairy cows, and Illinois has plenty of them on our state’s small and medium-sized farms. Most milk that Illinois…
With Mother’s Day, school graduations and the traditional start of wedding season, May is a big time for flower growers. So our featured farm this month is Flora Bay Farm, located just south of Carbondale in southern Illinois. We recommend…
A century ago, there were nearly 1 million Black farmers in the United States, and they composed about 14 percent of the farm population. Today there are fewer than 50,000, just over 1 percent of all farmers. So if you…
Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) was at the cutting edge as consumer interest in buying food directly from local farmers started to build. True believers eagerly subscribed to receive CSA boxes from their favorite farms, ensuring that they would enjoy the products…