I visited our local Farmers Market on Saturday September 25th, 2010. I’m embarrassed to admit this is the 1st time I’ve been to this great Mountain Home event and now I know what’s there I’ll be back. The surprising part, at least to me was the sheer number of people who were shopping. The Railroad Park parking lot was quite crowded and the vendors seemed to be doing good business.
Buy Mountain Home – Buy Elmore County
What can you find at the Mountain Home Farmers Market on the last weekend of September? A surprising assortment of fruits, vegetables and homegrown items. There were bins of peppers, squash, tomatoes, apples, green beans, peaches, potatoes and watermelons. In addition, aspiring entrepreneur were selling their locally made jams and vegetable salsas. The “Broken Circle Cattle Company” was there selling their locally grown beef. So the farmers market is a place where you can buy all the ingredients for a nice 3 course dinner and know all the items came from the local area. Who knew!
1,500 Mile Savings?
I started researching farmers markets when I got home with my bag of Idaho apples and two big bags of green beans. What I found was most “produce” bought in a grocery store travels 1,500 miles just to get on your kitchen table. That’s just plain crazy don’t you think? Did we run out of places to grow fruits and vegetables in Idaho? I think not. In all fairness though, interest in farmers market is growing by leaps and bounds. One statistics indicates visitors to local markets are growing 10-15% each year. And why not…buying local and keeping the money in Mountain Home is a great idea.
Thanks for reading this local business article. I encourage questions, comment and any information you may have on local businesses in the Mountain Home area.
Tim Bondy
The Bondyweb.Com author