Here is a guide to Little Rock’s Farmers’ Markets.  You can buy local almost any day of the week!

The Argenta Farmers’ Market (Certified Arkansas Farmers’ Market): @ Argenta Market, across Main St. Saturdays, 7am – 12 Noon. An all-Arkansas certified market, with a wide variety of local products. Tokens available for EBT, debit, and credit cards. Live music and community events. Lots of regular, local vendors.

Bernice Garden Farmers’ Market: @ the Bernice Sculpture Garden. Sundays, 10-2pm. All-Arkansas producers, with plenty of urban farms and community gardens. Lots of veggies, pasture-raised meat, treats, artisan cheese, coffee & pastries, live plants, dog treats. Live music and special events frequent.  Root Cafe, Boulevard, and Loblolly Soda Fountain open for brunch.

Farmers’ Market at Shoppes on Woodlawn: @ the Shoppes on Woodlawn lawn. Thursdays, 4:30-7pm.  Another Arkansas producers certified market in its first season, in the heart of Hillcrest. Organic produce, organic apparel, pasture-raised meats, and fresh pastries.  Perfect for after-work shoppers and happy hours.

Farmers’ Market at The Village: @ the Village Shopping Center, in the Whole Foods parking lot. Wednesdays, 4-7pm.  A first season market, featuring certified Arkansas producers, with a focus on natural and organic.  Fruits, veggies, and pasture-raised meats!

Hillcrest Farmers’ Market: in front of Pulaski Heights Baptist Church, 2200 Kavanaugh Blvd., year-round. Summer hours: 7-12 Noon. Winter hours: 8-12 Noon. All-Arkansas vendors: organic fruits and veggies, pasture-raised meat, baked goods & coffee, live plants, food trucks.

The Little Rock Farmers’ Market: in the River Market’s two open-air pavilions, 7 AM – 3 PM every Tuesday and Saturday, April 30th , 2013 through October 26th, 2013. Lots of crafts, value-added products, fruits, and vegetables! River Market’s food purveyors open. Space to walk along the river & access to the Trolley.

Little Rock Local Food Club: Saturdays, 10-12pm & Mondays, 4:30-6pm, @ Christ Episcopal Church.  Little Rock’s online farmers’ market.  All Arkansas producers, open year-round. Loaded with pasture-raised beef, chicken, pork, duck, elk, lamb, & goat.  Lots of fruits, vegetables, artisan bread, artisan cheese, fresh eggs, live plants, herbs & spices, and value-added products.  Order online between Sunday 12:30pm – Wednesday, 7:30am, @ littlerock.locallygrown.net.

Westover Hills Farmers’ Market: adjacent to Westover Hills Presbyterian Church, 6400 Kavanaugh Blvd. Tuesdays, 4-7pm. Fruit and vegetables, cut flowers, crafts, and art.  A good midweek market for the Heights’ business district.

Quick reminder: The Arkansas Local Food Network gave Feed Fayetteville a $500 grant in 2013 for their Care Cropping program, a program that works to collect excess local produce for communities in need. This is the first update of the year on how the project is going!

From Adrienne Shaunfield…

It’s springtime and the Fayetteville’s Farmer’s Market is back in full swing! We were so excited to see all the smiling faces on the Square on Saturday, seeing old friends and catching up with our local farmers. This week also kicks off the beginning of market gleaning. Gleaning refers to the act of collecting excess produce from the farmer’s market in order to distribute it to those in need.

Market gleaning at the Fayetteville Farmers’ Market is a partnership between Seeds that Feed, Fayetteville Farmers’ Market, and Feed Fayetteville. After the market ends, leftover produce is collected, weighed, sorted and prepared for pick-up. Gleaned produce is distributed among local non-profits and churches that serve community meals or have pantries.

This year we are trying some new things to become more efficient in transportation and distribution of the produce. We are excited to be able to use our new Community Food Hub, literally as a ‘hub,’ to do the washing, weighing and sorting of the produce. We are also becoming greener gleaners by reducing the amount of plastic bags used during the process. We are also going to work hard to encourage market patrons to purchase extra for hunger relief.

This year we will also be working on a few new projects with the gleaned produce that we are really excited about. We’ve partnered with the U of A Food Science department to create some added value products using the gleaned produce. This is a trial project to create some local, nutrient dense shelf-stable food items that can be used in weekend snack pack programs at area schools. We are also part of a collaboration called Sunday Supper, a community meal that takes place every Sunday at Trinity United Methodist Church. It is a collaboration between Tri Cycle Farms, Trinity United Methodist, First Presbyterian, St. Paul’s Methodist, First Christian, Good Shepherd Lutheran, Arkansas Hunger Alliance, and Feed Fayetteville. Together we are filling the gap in meal services in our community by adding a Sunday meal. Each partner takes a turn at preparing and serving the meal, which includes live music and children’s activities and is open to all community residents. We work to include local foods at every meal. We will partner with Seeds that Feed to hand out fresh farmers market produce at the meal to those who need it. We are also expanding to be at two different Saturday markets: the downtown square and Botanical Gardens of the Ozarks, as well as our Tuesday and Thursday market days. Seeds that Feed attended a class on food safety at the University of Arkansas that will help us to focus upon proper food handling techniques at all times.

Here’s to a great market season!

The Feed Fayetteville, Fayetteville Farmers’ Market and Seeds that Feed team

Meet Mike and Patti McSwain: The heart behind McSwain Ranch

A few years ago, Mike and Patti began reading and researching where and how our society gets its food. It started with the The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. “Everyone should own a copy of that book,” Patti insists.

This book, as well as works by Joel Salatin, Allan Nation, and Greg Judy, inspired the McSwains to rethink how they eat and what they could do to change things for the better. They had acres of underutilized pasture around their home. They had once toyed with the notion of boarding horses, but their new awareness of the farming industry persuaded them to raise animals for food instead.

This Renaissance led to what is now McSwain Ranch in Lonoke, which provides beef to Central Arkansas’ upscale restaurants and lamb for ‘locavores’ and foodies from around the state. Now they are three years into their adventure with organic grass fed sheep and cattle farming. Using movable fencing, they use rotational grazing to keep their furry friends happy and well-fed with fresh grass.

Mike and Patti love sharing their passion for natural, healthy food and would love to give you a personal tour. You can learn about the underground water system that has been installed in the pastures and how they were awarded federal grants to pursue natural cattle and sheep farming. Also lambing season (March and April) is in full swing, so it would make for a great family field trip.  Don’t be surprised if you get to help out wrangling sheep or get treated to an impromptu jazz concert inside their cozy cabin while visiting. They are a welcoming and joyful couple, full of pleasant surprises. Call Mike (501) 676-1572 or Patti (501) 681-1782 to schedule your tour.

Courtesy of Lyndsey Lewis

Check out these very easy to replicate Raised Garden Beds. An effecient way to intensively grow herbs, vegetables, and flowers. Courtesy of Sarah Brown of Maison Terre!

Arkansas Natural Produce: Small-Scale Family Farming

In the whimsical words of Jessie, our 11-year-old community partner who recently visited Arkansas Natural Produce….

At Pulaski Heights Elementary we hired Nathaniel Wills to teach gardening. In reality he does much more than just instruct us how to dig, weed, and plant. He educates us on many subjects, such as how to create a garden from scratch, how to purchase seeds, and how to keep records on the garden and map it out. We also learn about pests and compost. But most importantly, he encourages eating healthy and tasty vegetables. This year we are including an outdoor kitchen where we will prepare food and wash vegetables to sell.

     Arkansas Natural Produce (ANP) felt like a bigger version of my school garden. Last week my mom and I took a tour of ANP. When we pulled up I thought for a moment that they grew and sold covered wagons instead of vegetables. Of course the “covered wagons” were really greenhouses. Soon, a couple walked out of the small white house that was close to the road and introduced themselves as Jay and Deanna Fulbright. As we walked down to the garden, Jay informed us that they have lived on this property since 1999. When we entered the first greenhouse he said that there are about twenty greenhouses on their property.

     As I walked into the greenhouse, I noticed a line of timed sprinklers hanging from the top of the greenhouse. We were told that they run the sprinklers five minutes once a day in the winter and six to seven minutes, two to three times a day in the summer. As I looked around at the sea of green and red, I could tell that they try to use every little space inside the greenhouse. They grow and sell arugula, bok choy, broccoli, dandelions, edible flowers, fennel, green onions, greens (mustards, tatsoi, mizunas, spinach, and kale), micro greens, lettuces (red oakleaf, red leaf, romaine, red romaine), sugar snap peas, sorrel, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, watercress, chervil, cilantro, dill, chives, garlic chives, marjoram, oregano, parsley, rosemary, sage, spearmint and thyme. Whew!

     As I looked at all the produce instead of paying attention, I stubbed my toe on a little brown mouse trap (luckily it wasn’t set!).  “Mice are our biggest pests besides fire ants. Fire ants never leave. They make their homes in the lettuce beds and dig up the seeds to eat. The most you can do to them is discourage them. It is much easier to control bugs in the green houses than in vegetable beds outside.” Jay said.

     We were told that ANP does not use pesticides unless it is all natural (plant based or bacterial). They use no herbicides, and they only hand weed. They have large fans in the green houses to keep the air circulating. I spied a large gray thing sitting off to one side. Jay said that it is an Aqua Fogger. It creates fog of natural pesticides. They set it out at night instead of spraying all of the plants by hand so the gardeners don’t come in contact with pesticides.

     As we entered another greenhouse, Jay told us how he got interested in farming. When he was a child his great grandfather was a farmer and his grandfather was a general store owner. Being a general store owner, he worked with farmers, sold their vegetables and financed their farms by letting them buy groceries and farm supplies on credit. The farmers would pay him back after the harvest. In addition to the general store he had his own garden. That is where Jay got his experience, but he decided what his purpose in life would be during his college years.

     During Jay’s college years one of his professors told him to write a paper about the future of farming. Jay wrote about how important small family-owned farms were and that there would be more in the future. His professor disagreed and said that farms would be large, corporate farms. Frustrated, Jay decided to prove his professor wrong and started farming.

     Jay and Deanna have been farmers since 1989. They grow and sell produce to local grocery stores, restaurants and to local on-line co-ops. In the words of Dr. Seuss, “Just tell yourself, Duckie, you’re really quite lucky! Some people are much more… oh, ever so much more…. oh, muchly much-much more unlucky than you!” Of course that would be… because they do not order from ANP.