Market Newsletter - Meet Your Farmer and more!

This post expired on December 08, 2023.

Well, Siloam Springs survived the first winter snow/ice storm of the season. Most of the activities our community participates in had to be re-scheduled including the Online Farmers Market pick up. Seems it worked out for all of us though, as I think by today (Sunday)we were all ready to get out of the house! I appreciate everyone who participates in the market either as a producer/vendor or customer.

*Online Market is now re-open for business and will accept orders through Wednesday at 5 p.m. *

Photo Credit Matt Austin Feyerabend

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Meet Your Farmer

JD Hudson Farms is located in Tontitown, Arkansas and sells meat products at the Siloam Springs, Springdale, and Rogers Farmer’s Markets.

JD Hudson Farms believes people should have the power to choose what goes into the food they eat. As a Northwest Arkansas local I saw the need to provide quality meat products. Giving our animals a pasture to exercise in and giving them plenty of fresh water helps create a healthy meat for you and your family.

“Our focus isn’t on creating the largest amount of meat the cheapest. We spend our time producing quality meats that have the best taste.”

We’ve only started to raise pigs. Even though we’re a new business, through the next couple years we only plan on growing.

A chronological look at JD Hudson farms progression

JD Hudson farms is a start up company. In the summer of 2012, he started selling vegetables at the Springdale Farmer’s Market. Encouraged by the quality of vegetables including tomatoes, squash, zucchini, and a lot more, he continued to sell at both the Jones Center location and the Shiloh Square until the end of the market season. During the winter months JD began looking for more options. With his 16 acres in rural Washington County he had a lot of opportunity.

JD began to lay out his plans for the following year. Work toward Green Houses, Blueberry patches, and more tomato production were made. Unfortunately, a recent move ended many of those intial plans. Looking at his other plans JD began to reach out to other hog farmers in the area. Roger Keys, of Garner Abattoir, encouraged him to begin selling meat at farmer’s market. JD quickly learned that Roger was right. The demand for pasture fed meat and eggs was huge. It was during the summer of 2013 that JD visited and joined the Siloam Springs Farmers Market.

JD Hudson Farms plans on expanding our herds and selling options.

Website: www.jdhudsonfarms.com

Contact info:
PO Box 608
Tontitown, AR 72770
479-841-1934

photos taken from jdhudsonfarms.com

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Why Should I Buy and Eat Local Foods?
8 Straight-Forward Benefits of Eating Local Foods

by Molly Watson

Eating local foods is better for you, for the environment, and (most importantly) for your taste buds. Here are the top eight big, umbrella-style reasons you might want to consider eating more local foods.

1. Local Foods Are Fresher (and Taste Better)

Local food is fresher and tastes better than food that has been trucked or flown in from thousands of miles away. Think you can’t taste the difference between lettuce picked yesterday and lettuce picked last week, factory-washed, and sealed in plastic? You can.

And fresh food? It lasts longer too.

2. Local Foods Are Seasonal (and Taste Better)

It must be said: Deprivation leads to greater appreciation. When does a cozy room feel best? When you’ve come in from out of the freezing cold. In-season, locally grown tomatoes burst with flavor that’s easy to forget if you only eat ones that are artificially ripened with gas. Fresh corn in season tastes best when you haven’t eaten any in 9 or 10 months – long enough for its taste to be a slightly blurred memory that is suddenly awakened with that first bite of the season. Eating locally means eating seasonally, with all the deprivation and resulting pleasure that accompanies it.

3. Local Foods Usually Have Less Environmental Impact

Those thousands of miles some food is shipped? That leads to a big carbon footprint for a little bunch of herbs. Look for farmers who follow organic and sustainable growing practices and energy use to minimize your food’s environmental impact.

4. Local Foods Preserve Green Space & Farmland

The environmental question of where you food comes from is bigger than its “carbon footprint.” By buying foods grown and raised closer to where you live, you help maintain farmland and green space in your area.

5. Local Foods Promote Food Safety

The fewer steps there are between your food’s source and your table the less chance there is of contamination. Also, when you know where your food comes from and who grows it, you know a lot more about that food. During the e. coli outbreak in spinach in 2006 I knew the spinach in my refrigerator was safe because I knew it was grown in Yolo County by a farmer I knew, and, as importantly, that it didn’t come from Salinas County where the outbreak was. (The knowledge would have worked in reverse too: if the outbreak had been in Yolo County instead, I would have known to throw that bunch of greens and scrub down the fridge!)

6. Local Foods Promote Variety

Local foods tend to create a greater variety of foods available. Farmers who run community-supported agriculture programs (CSAs), sell at farmers markets, and provide local restaurants have the demand and hence the economic support for raising more types of produce and livestock. This leads to Brandywines, Early Girls, and Lemon Boys instead of “tomatoes.”

7. Local Foods Support Your Local Economy

Money spent with local farmers, growers, and artisans and locally-owned purveyors and restaurants all stays close to home. It works to build your local economy instead of being handed over to a corporation in another city, state, or country. Since the food moves through fewer hands, more of the money you spend tends to get to the people growing it.
To make the biggest local economic impact with your food budget, seek out producers who pay their workers a fair wage and practice social justice in their business.

8. Local Foods Create Community

Knowing where your food is from connects you to the people who raise and grow it. Instead of having a single relationship – to a big supermarket – you develop smaller connections to more food sources. All of the sudden you know vendors at the farmers market, the buying manager at the local cheese shop, the butcher at your favorite meat counter, the workers at the co-op that sells local eggs, the roaster and barista at the local café. For some people the benefit of this is social and psychological; for all of us, though, it pays off in the foods we eat. People who know you tend to want to help you, whether it’s giving you a deal on a leg of lamb, letting you know when your favorite tomatoes will be on sale, or setting aside a wedge of your favorite cheese.

Eating locally? Amazingly, it can connect you to a larger world.

Article link here: http://localfoods.about.com/od/finduselocalfoods/tp/5-Reasons-to-Eat-Local-Foods.htm