Are there membership fees?

To help us provide farm tours, educational programs, and to help us with our overhead costs, we ask that you pay an annual fee of $30 per household for one calendar year. You are welcome to try us for one order before officially becoming members.

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Will I have to buy vegetables I don't want?

Unlike some co-ops, buying clubs, or CSAs where everyone gets the same box of stuff (and you don’t know what you’re getting until you get it), with Locally Grown you get to order what you want, in the quantities that you want, from the farms that you want. The weekly email lists the produce, milled products, fresh flowers, and artisan goods available that week, and you can browse the items on this website before you place your order.

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How do I order?

Each Monday evening, a list of available products is sent to all of our registered customers by e-mail. Customers must place their order for the week no later than Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. Orders can be placed here on our website. Ordering through this web site is our preferred method as it is designed to reduce the amount of time it takes us to process orders as well as provide you with detailed information about our products.

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When do I pay?

You can pay right online when you finish your order, or wait until you pick it up at Market. We accept cash, checks or credit/debit cards when you pick up your order. You also can deposit an amount into your account and draw down on it. Need a special gift? How about giving a Lake City Locally Grown gift certificate? It’s available right in the list of products on the market ordering page.

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When and Where do I pick up my order?

From 10:30 am-1:00pm, customers can pick-up their orders downtown in Lake City at the corner of Marion Street and Highway 90, in the parking lot across from the courthouse. Just look for the Locally Grown trailer!

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Why Support Locally Grown?

Enhance your local economy: By purchasing produce and other items from local growers you are providing stability to your local economy through the support of local businesses.

Save natural resources: Buying locally makes you an invaluable link in the process of saving resources such as fossil fuels and packaging materials. Also, we are right here in your community so the expense of transportation and delivery is kept to a minimum.

Provide learning opportunities: Locally Grown supporters provide member growers the means to help educate our community about the importance of sustainable agriculture.

Supporting a way of life: The number of small farms in the United States has decreased dramatically in the last decade. Please help us preserve an honest and worthy means of making a living.

We believe that small, diverse, family-owned farms contribute to society’s overall health.

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How can I sell through this market?

If you’ve already created a customer account here, simply go to Our Growers and click on ‘If you would like to sell through this market, please tell us about yourself and a market manager will contact you.’. This will add you to our system and our market managers will contact you with the next step. We do charge 15% of your overall sales. Like at a traditional farmers’ market, you do get to set your own prices and list your items as you wish, and the good news is you can begin selling and not have to set up a table and sit there all day! I’ll do all that for you! Contact Carol at lakecitylocallygrown@gmail.com if you want more information.

You should have a good understanding of how we work before you apply to be a grower. We would like you to first become a customer and place a couple orders so you can see firsthand how we operate. Things go so much more smoothly if you’d join us as a customer first, so unless you’ve already received an invitation from us to join as a grower, your request to sell will be denied if you’ve never shopped at the market. Please come in and talk to us when you pick up your items, so we can show you around and get to know you.

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So there is no minimum order?

Nope. Order as much or as little as you want, from the farms that you want.

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Are there taxes or other charges added to my order?

The growers set their own prices, and are all-inclusive, including any taxes (like gasoline at the gas station, or food at the airport). Since the growers are selling directly to you, they (not ALG) are responsible for collecting and reporting sales and other taxes.

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Oh no! I forgot to pickup my order! Now what?

Well, I’m sorry we missed you.

About a half hour before we pack up to go home, we’ll call you if you haven’t come yet, using the phone number you tied to your account. If you have a cell phone, use that number!

Most times, we get an answering machine, so if we haven’t reached you when it’s time to go, we’ll try again.

If we still haven’t been able to reach you, your items will be donated or given away! We do not have a means to keep items until the next week, or to deliver them to you. If we were able to reach you on the phone, we may be able to work out an arrangement, but otherwise, your items will be donated or given away!

Since the growers harvested just for you, and (more importantly) since we paid the growers on your behalf when they brought them to our market, you are still responsible for paying for items, even if you do not pick them up. We’ll charge your account, and that amount will get added to your next order.

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How do I cook with this produce? Do you have any recipes?

Yes! Just click on the “Recipes” section of the site. You can also add your own favorite recipes to the site there.

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Why are some of your products labelled "organic" and others are not?

To use the word “organic”, a grower must register through the USDA and keep up with a tremendous amount of paperwork. The process is very expensive and intensive, and certainly favors the larger factory farms over the small family farm.

Another system is “Certified Naturally Grown”. This nation-wide program seeks to correct the problems with the USDA certification system. The standards are just as strict (and in some cases, more so) as the USDA Organic program, but there is no cost to become certified. There is still some paperwork, but not as much. More importantly, the growers in the program inspect each other, rather than relying on an outside for-profit certifier. Several of our growers have gone this route.

Finally, a few growers are not certified by anyone but still use organic sustainable methods on their farms.

To find out more about our growers and their practices, and to see what certification, if any, they have, take a look at our Growers page.

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You offer raw milk? I thought that was illegal.

To sell dairy products, including eggs, Florda’s cottage industry law lets us do so as long as it is labeled “for pet use”. These products are carefully produced and are far fresher than big stores could ever arrange.

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