Selling at Farmers Market

Have you ever walked through a local farmers market and wished you, too, could be part of the growing local foods movement selling vegetables, fruits, meats, flowers, value-added goods such as breads, cheeses, preserves or prepared foods?

As more folks opt for a simpler, community-based lifestyle, more local farmers markets are popping up all over America.

According to the USDA, between 2010 and 2011, the number of farmers markets in the United States increased by 17%.

Dipping your toes (or diving head-first) into the vast array of farmers markets today involves much more than just pulling into a parking lot with a bunch of other like-minded people, dropping your tailgate and hanging out a shingle.

Today, farmers markets are multi-million dollar opeartions with complex rules, requirements and regulations.

Sandra Kay Miller has been involved with farmers markets for over twenty five years on both side of the table. With a professional career and business ventures in the food industry, Sandra was an ardent supporter and organizer of producer-only farmers markets in southern California.

But her passion for production, especially livestock, led back to her home in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania where she purchased, in her words, "a garbage dump" and proceeded to design a rotational browsing and grazing system that utilizes the unique and bountiful features of the landscape including sylvo-pastures, gravity-fed automated watering systems and portable multi-species shelters.

All those years of coveting the lifestyle of her local purveyors in the west, Sandra embarked on her journey through the explosive growth of farmers markets in the mid-Atlantic region appropriately at the dawn of a new millennium.

From special event one-day events to weekly, year-round markets, Sandra has participated in many markets in the mid-Atlantic region. Drawing from her experience, she has captured the most frequently asked questions and answers to the often confusing world of farmers markets in the twenty first century.