Farm gate sales a good way to get fresh produce on your dinner table: Andrew Coppolino

Setting aside the idea of a backyard carrot patch or chicken coop, there are several ways you can get local food on your dinner table. 

The most convenient way is shopping at your local grocery store, though that will yield minimal local results.

Next, you could visit a farmers' market — which, especially in season, offers the largest bounty of selection.

There are a few specialty food shops and on-farm stores, the latter of which stock the farm's produce and that of other local farms.  

You could subscribe to a farm's CSA — a community-shared agriculture program — which will get you boxes of locally-grown food either delivered or for pick-up but only for part of the year.  
 
There are also "honour stands" and farm gate sales: hop in the car and head into the countryside where you stop at small roadside stalls or navigate pot-holed gravel laneways to an old barn.

There, you take the honey, duck eggs or asparagus that you want and leave your money in a jar or box. Chances are you won't even see the farmer.   

Often a mode of commerce for Mennonites, especially in Waterloo region, farm gate sales continue to be popular.   

"They've been fairly consistent around here, just because there's so many Mennonites and their roadside stands," according to Peter Katona, who now oversees sales and marketing for Martin's Family Fruit Farm on Lobsinger Line in Waterloo. 

Previously, Katona spent several years as executive director of Foodlink, an organization that connects shoppers to local food.

"Everybody still seems to think farm gate sales are a good idea," he adds. 

Agricultural freelance writer Helen Lammers-Helps would agree. 

"Selling sweet corn at the end of the lane still seems to be popular even outside of Mennonite areas, and you see the odd unmanned stand of tomatoes, zucchini and cut flowers," she notes. 

But depending on who you ask, you will get a different answer as to what farm gate is. It may not even be farmers, according to Christina Mann of Taste Real in Wellington County. 

"There's a lot of variety. The coolers (of food) out front, or the bucket of flowers as an additional income source, for instance. Often, it's rural residents interested in tapping their maple trees. They may have a few hens and have excess eggs too," she says. 

Different foods available 

In early spring, there's no fresh farm gate produce; there is, however, usually a year-round supply of fresh and freezer beef, pork and chicken as well as honey and fresh maple syrup, the spring's first crop.

"This time of the year, the countryside is exploding with little huts and smoke coming out of them," says Katona of the syrup production. 

Soon, it will be asparagus and rhubarb as farm gate options, and as the sun warms up greenhouses, there will be the first early leafy greens. 

"That's arugula and mustards in two to three weeks, lettuce leaves in 45 days and tomatoes in 60 to 80 days," according to Antony John, an organic farmer based in Sebringville.

But whatever's for sale at the farm gate, it's competing with more convenient, one-stop venues. 

"I do think there has been an increase in on-farm stores and stores in town selling produce directly as well as selling direct to customers via CSA subscriptions," Lammers-Helps says.  

Finding farm gates

Finding farm gate sales and lane-way honour stands is another matter.

Consulting the local farm maps produced by Taste Real and Foodlink can yield results; in some cases, though, that might mean driving 30 minutes for the local organic rabbit that you're craving. 

Word of mouth plays a role but so too does a farm creating a digital presence, according to Katherine Baer of Vibrant Farms in Baden.

"More and more farms are presenting themselves online, so a Google search is becoming an effective way of finding new sources," says Baer, adding that the farm gate experience is becoming something of a tourism phenomenon.

Though the gas expense might blow your margins on affordable farm gate food, the automobile is a good way to explore the region's farmland as it awakens from winter. 

"If you just wander around Lobsinger Line or take a spin up to Northfield Drive through Conestogo on the way to Elora, there's many farm gate sales there," Katona says. 

"Are farm gate sales as trendy as they once were? Probably not," he adds. "Are they as common? I would say probably yes."