Written By: Aurora Mom, Lorilee Jarosinski
Like many others, my family has become more conscious of eating locally-grown food and we are so lucky here in York Region to have access to local farms and farmers’ markets.
York Region Tourism has a great Farm Fresh map in PDF format , listing 21 farms and 3 farmers’ markets. It includes lots of great information about each farm, including what products the farm produces and operating hours.
I’ve had first-hand experience with three of the listings:
- The Aurora Farmers Market Every Saturday morning from May until October, my daughter and I make the short trip to the Aurora town park. We pick up whatever produce looks good that day, and sometimes some delicious unpasturized buckwheat honey . I like to grab a cinnamon bun and l some locally roasted fair-trade organic coffee to snack on while my daughter plays in the playground, after she’s eaten her back bacon sandwich. Sometimes there’s live music, artists, and hand-made wares of every sort. I love this market and I think it’s one of the reasons why I love living in Aurora.
- Forsythe Family Farms We visited this farm last Thanksgiving. The first thing we noticed was the incredible smell of pies baking in the store. We visited with the farm animals and the corn maze, picked up some apples, gourds, pumpkins and obviously, a couple of those pies.
- Cooper’s goat and veggie farm This year my family joined the Coopers in Community Supported Agriculture. In short, we paid for a share early in the season and in return we receive a basket of the farm’s produce each week for 20 weeks. I’m so excited to receive my baskets of fresh locally grown produce. Each basket’s contents will be a surprise, so this is going to be an adventure!
( Editor’s Note - Our family to have signed up for a CSA share with Coopers farm and last week we got out first box of fresh local vegetables, best idea ever! I love it! )
So York Region Parents, head out to your local farms and markets, and enjoy!
