Farmers are getting the hang of social media and it’s helping their sales at local farmers markets around the country. If you follow them on Twitter and Facebook, you’ll get early tips on good deals.
Take the Chicago area, for example. Dietzler Farms, a favorite of more than a few Chicago chefs, will be offering a one-day-only special for its debut at Saturday’s Green City Market: five pounds of ground beef for $20. Three Sisters Garden in Kankakee will be hawking pea shoots, black beans and rolled oats, among other goodies.
Oh, the power of a tweet. Chicago’s Green City Market (which, of course, has its own Twitter and Facebook pages, each with nearly 5,000 followers or fans just since last spring) encourages farmers to start Facebook and Twitter accounts to get the word out of their offerings. In mid-April, the market gave customers a heads-up online about the first-of-the-season asparagus. Thirty minutes before that Saturday market opened had hundreds of people were lined up, waiting to get to that asparagus, which was gone in 30 minutes.
A Facebook post by Three Sisters Garden about pecans for Green City’s first indoor market last November resulted in a sell-out of 100 pounds of pecans.
Janet Rausa Fuller, the Food Editor of the Chicago Sun Times, has the full story here.
