Watching a lonely parking lot spring to life with our vendors every Saturday morning is one of my favorite parts of managing the market. As I helped set up last Saturday, I wondered, how far do vegetables travel from our farms to our market?
After talking with the farmers, I have a few uncomplicated numbers to share. Vegetables makes less than a 40-mile journey from our farms to your hands. Instead of California, Florida, and Iowa, the veggies come from Middletown, Branford, and Milford. Our supply chain network is as simple as River Crest Farm driving their truck over from the north side of town.
This low mileage is not the norm. From farm to grocery store, produce travels an average of 1,300 miles. 1,300 miles! If you travel 1,300 miles from Milford, you could land in faraway places like New Orleans, North Dakota, even Turks and Caicos! A grocery store salad just may rack up more frequent flyer miles than you do this summer.
The small distance vegetables travel to our market has big impacts. Less transport results in less pollution. Food dollars are routed away from transportation and towards farming. Perhaps most delicious of all, the vegetables are fresh and packed with local flavor. There’s no jetlag in a farmers’ market salad.
So all of this mileage has me wondering…how do YOU get to The Downtown Milford Farmers’ Market? With lots of parking, the train station next door, a bus stop down the street, and the harbor two blocks away, the possibilities are endless. Take a moment to vote in our extremely scientific Facebook poll: https://www.facebook.com/Milfordmarket/.
