Fresh farm products for summer

With summer in full swing, the bounty of fresh, local produce is all around us. Roadside stands and community markets are stocked and ready for summer cookouts, picnics and family gatherings. Local farm markets make it so much easier to eat healthy, increasing our fruit and vegetable consumption in our diets — something many of us have heard from the doctor!

If you don’t have your own garden, do you know where to find locally grown produce, meat, and eggs in Sampson County? Extension has a variety of ways to help learn and connect local communities with our local food resources. On the web, be sure to visit the N.C. Cooperative Extension – Sampson County Center webpage for a list of locally grown food producers across the county at: https://sampson.ces.ncsu.edu/local-food-resources/.

We will continue to update this page with local resources and opportunities, so be sure to save it for future reference. Any local growers wanting to be added to the resource page can call our office and we will gladly add their contact information.

If you are a smartphone user, you’ll want to download the Visit NC Farms App on your phone. The app gives you dozens of options to find local produce, meat, and eggs within the county, not to mention hundreds more all across North Carolina. The App conveniently organizes local products, farms, markets, and roadside stands where we locate suppliers closest to our current location, or along the way to our destination. So, if you are on the way to a beach weekend and want to grab the freshest of fruit and veggies along the way, let the app work for you!

For those wanting to learn more about local foods and programs offered across the state, NC State Extension offers a comprehensive web portal about the Local Foods Program, which is intended to share the work and research being done in Extension, and provide connections to resources and information to those working to support developing local food systems. Also, local food system activities are shared through the Local Food – N.C. Cooperative Extension Facebook page.

For more information about finding or growing and marketing local foods in Sampson County, using the Visit NC Farms App and other resources, contact us at the Cooperative Extension Center at 910-592-7161.