Are there membership fees?

We do not charge a membership fee.

To help us supply you with the freshest possible produce we will be getting the highest standard insulated boxes (2) that will enable us to deliver the produce right from the farmer to you in the best possible condition.

Everyone interested in joining the locallygrown.net circle, is asked to get two of the highest quality boxes, that will facilitate pickup and delivery.

Cost price of these boxes is $ 120 per box. Upon joining we ask you to cover our expenses ($240). These boxes are returnable, though they decrease in value 2 % per month ($ 5).

Members are invited to attend monthly events.

These special events include movie nights with a food theme to it, farm dinners and/or staying over at the farm for the weekend.

They also include programs where you (or your (grand)kids can be a cowboy or girl for a day, or you have the chance to organize your next corporate retreat right on one of the farms?

All this and more…. organized by local farmers… all this with the mission of HEALING OUR LAND, ONE BITE AT A TIME…

In the names of all (y)our (grand)children, to whom we will hand over healthier lands…

Thank You!

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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 Sunday 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 Tuesday at 5:00 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?

We accept cash or checks when you pick up your order. Because we may have to adjust your total then (to account for unnanounced items you decide to purchase or items that were unexpectedly unavailable), we do not accept advance payment on the website.

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When and Where do I pick up my order?

Thursdays 2-7 pm, you can pick-up your produce at 15 Aylmer ave, Ottawa, ON K1S 4R3, second floor (elevator accessible) in Southminster United Church.

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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. Monthly events will be organized central Ottawa and at the farmers.

Supporting a way of life: The number of small farms in Canada 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.

All this and more…. organized by local farmers… all this with the mission of HEALING OUR LAND, ONE BITE AT A TIME…

In the names of all (y)our (grand)children…. Thank You!

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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 scroll to the bottom, and look for the line “If you would like to sell through this market, pleas tell us about yourself and a market manager will contact you.”

Click the link, and this will add you to our system and you will be contacted about the next step.

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.

If you’ve already created a customer account here, simply go to Our Growers and click on ‘Join this Market’.

This will add you to our system and our market managers will contact you with the next step. We do charge a one-time-only fee of $100 (which we can deduct from your sales) as well as 10% of your overall sales.

You do get to set your own prices and list your items as you wish. Contact bbakker@magma.ca for more information.

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When I come pick up my order, you guys run around, and return with an armload of stuff. What goes on?

It’s a major effort to get all the produce together, organized, and then distributed back out to the customers.

Imagine taking a full farmers’ market, spread out over a park or other location, and condensing it down to a single room — that’s what we do.

Our volunteers helped the growers unload everything, and know, more or less, where everything is. They’re running from table to table finding and gathering your items.

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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.

With more people ordering, and order sizes growing, we’re starting to have a problem again with people not arriving to pick up their orders on Thursday. Please remember that for both legal and logistical reasons (the legal being the most important, of course), I can not hold your items beyond 8pm on Thursday. We start calling those who haven’t arrived by 7:30, but most of the time we just get answering machines and voice mail. Anything still at our pickup location at 8pm will get divided up among those there at the time, primarily my volunteers, and then we finish loading up the truck and leave. Since I had already paid the growers on your behalf earlier in the day, you are still responsible for paying for any items you order but do not come pick up. If this happens, I charge your account, and the total is added to your next order.

Here are some things you can do to insure you won’t get charged for things you didn’t come get:

1. If you know prior to Tuesday at 8pm that you won’t be able to come get your order, send me an email and I will cancel your order.
2. If you find out later that you can’t come, send me an email. So long as I know before market begins, I can put the things you ordered on the “extras” table, and your fellow customers will almost certainly buy them for you.
3. If you discover Thursday while we’re at market that you can’t arrive, give me a call at 706-248-1860. I’ll put your items on the “extras” table, and if they sell, you’ll be off the hook.
4. If you have a cell phone, make sure that number is the number on your account. You can go to the “Your Account” page on the website to be sure. If you’re out and about and I get your home phone or your work phone, no one gets helped.

Finally, there’s often a sizable pile of things up for grabs at 8pm. If you’re in the area and want to do a little extra shopping, swing by at about ten til (or wait until then to come get your own order). There may be things for sale you want, and you can save a fellow customer a charge to their account. Our volunteer workers get to split things up as a benefit of working, but paying customers do come first. And it always seems there are several things sitting there that were in high demand that week.

I do wish that we could be more flexible and accommodating for those who missed the window, but one of the legal “loopholes” we have to operate under is that we never take possession of your orders. You are buying directly from the growers, who bring their items to our pickup location, and then you arrive to pick it all up.

All the volunteers are there to facilitate and orchestrate the process, but if we go beyond that then we fall under the category of food resellers and distributors, which means we’d need the same equipment you’d find at the grocery store: refrigerators with charting temperature recorders, hot and cold running water, freezers, stainless steel tables and fixtures, etc.

In short… Ottawa Locally Grown would cease to exist.

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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. Additionally, we have these recipe and information sheets, courtesy of Angelic Organics:
Asparagus
Beets
Chicories
Choi
Cucumbers
Cooking Greens
Garlic
Herbs
Onions
Radished and Turnips
Salad Greens
Snap Peas
Sweet Corn
Zucchini and Summer Squash

These recipes and information sheets have been adapted from Angelic Organics’ excellent book “Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables” which can be purchased here.

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

First off, no “conventional” growers are allowed to sell through our market. Everything sold here is grown without the use of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides.

Everything here could be sold as “organic”, but many growers choose not to.

In Canada, organic certification addresses the need for assurance that organic food is grown and processed in accordance with specified organic standards.

A certification body assesses the farm or processing facility to ensure that it is adhering to these standards. In order to become certified, a farmer must not use any prohibited materials for 3 years prior to certification.

The farmer pays a fee for an inspector to review the history and setup of their operation, and to conduct an inspection of their facility. If the operation is found to be in compliance with the standards, a certificate of certification will be issued.

Annual updates and inspections are required to maintain certified organic status.

A few of our growers have gone that route, and they can legally use the word “organic” in Ontario.

Another system is “Certified Naturally Grown”. This program seeks to correct the problems with the certification system. The standards are just as strict (and in some cases, more so) as the Organic program, but there are less 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. Most of our growers have gone this route.

While some of our growers are not certified by anyone they still use organic sustainable methods on their farms.

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

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