It is finally time to celebrate the arrival of spring weather, and Virginia’s farmers are in the fields and orchards growing nutritious, delicious fruits and vegetables for your family’s dinner table and spring events.
The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) encourages consumers to cure their spring fever by doing the following:
- Try a new recipe using fresh Virginia Grown products. The Commonwealth has much to offer this time of year – lettuces, early peas, asparagus, eggs, spinach, herbs, honey, spring lamb and more. See VirginiaGrown.com and enter your favorite product, then search by city, county or zip code to find a farmers’ market or other venue near you.
- Don’t forget seafood, ham, beef, milk and other products available year-round. For milk, look for state code 51 to be sure it is from Virginia. It’s the first two numbers of a four-digit number on the carton – the other two digits are the plant code.
- Order your summer CSA subscription now. Many of these subscriptions sell out before May. You will find 13 pages of CSAs at VirginiaGrown.com.
- Map out your farmers’ market visits. Virginia has seen dramatic growth in farmers’ markets, from 88 in 2005 to 250 in 2019. Markets are thriving in almost every county and many cities, and you can find them at VirginiaGrown.com.
VDACS looks forward to seeing throngs of consumers at farmers’ markets and farms across the state very soon.
