Southern California’s enviable weather means even the winter months are good for growing, which means local farmers markets have a bounty of produce to shop all year round.
The county boasts 37 certified farmers markets each week, hosted in parking lots and along streets from north to south.
“We get a wide variety of producers,” said Seth Birenbaum, Orange County’s deputy agricultural commissioner, whose team regularly visits the markets to check up and certify them. “We do have quite a few local Orange County producers. Also from neighboring counties and central valley.”
In 2022 — last year’s report isn’t ready yet — 1,634 acres farmed in Orange County yielded more than 13,000 tons of fruit and berries, and some 16,700 acres produced 8,400 tons of vegetables. A lot of that goes straight to food banks, Birenbaum said, but much of it can also be found in the displays at the local farmers markets, adding to what is farmed across the region.
Kelli Johnson with Farm and Craft Market, the operator of several local farmer markets, said she has been told by farmers that January through April is one of the best times for growing. They “call it first spring,” she said, and it makes the beginning of the year one of the more popular at the markets.
“It is such a great time in the market,” she said. “Everything is so crisp and green.”
The certification process for farmers markets is a statewide program signed into place in 1977 by then-Gov. Jerry Brown. It standardized how farmers packed and labeled their produce so they could sell directly to the public without a distributor, and the modern-day farmers market was created.
“You know who the farmer is,” Birenbaum said. “Usually the people there are the farmers.”
To be eligible for state certification, a farmers market has to be operated by a nonprofit, a local government or a certified producer, Birenbaum said. And the farms selling have to be certified producers — once…
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