Anna - there is the huge State Farmer's Market on the southside of downtown near the I-40 Beltline off of Lake Wheeler Road. It's open all year but has the most vendors now. It's very large and well run - it should really be called a Produce Market because most of the vendors are not the farmer's that grew the produce (sometimes it's a relative, most often it is just someone hired to run the booth). During the week and on Saturday mornings there is another smaller market in downtown and one or two on the north side of downtown. Cary, Morrisville, Durham, Apex and Holly Springs all have Farmer's Markets within an hour of downtown Raleigh. If you want to drive a bit you should head over to Carrboro (beside Chapel Hill) for their well run/attended Real Farmers Market where the vendors are the farmers and just about all of them are organic.

We only sell at Farmers Markets. I have sold to our school district (the one I work at) and at a grocery store in our hometown and at one 30 miles away where I grew up. We have several chefs who purchase produce from our market and they have a "Local Special" every week. I also had a chef who bought pickling cucs for homemade pickles for their sandwiches for weeks. I don't actively seek out chefs or wholesale markets. I am not large enough to justify it, IMO. Also, if I sell wholesale, that doesn't give me much to sell at the Farmers Markets. All my wholesale "Sales" were because of an excessive amount of produce and low sales due to a glut of produce at the market. My sales to my school were because the head person came and talked to me about it. Problem is, I don't work for free and her budget for food required extremely cheap inputs. I wasn't going to plant, grow, harvest, wash and bag Romaine lettuce for 50 cents a head, when I was selling it for $2.50-3.00 a head at the market. She ordered 15 heads of romaine and 5 pounds of spinach(baby leaf) for the salad bars. I dropped it off at the central Kitchen and submitted my bill for $45. I got an email later that said basically she thought my bill was too high and she was expecting something in the $10-15 range. She paid me and never ordered anything from me again. I have also been insulted by chefs. it was several years ago and a local chef (who is no longer in business) stopped by the market and said he would give me 50 cents a pound for the nicest red slicers I had available. Keep in mind this was mid June and I was selling out at $3.50 a pound. I laughed to my wife after he left. I guess my experience with wholesale, food service and chefs has been nothing but bad, so I never went back to it. If the chef is willing to pay for a quality product, I will work with them. For me, I limit the quantity of what I grow and grow a larger variety of produce. This makes my stand more attractive to customers and helps me gain and maintain my customer base. Also it spreads out my risk over many crops and many plantings. Just my experiences, Jay

I would say, just get an FD fridge without the in-door water/ice dispenser. You'll save a ton of space (not to mention, those in-door water/ice makers seem to be the most trouble-prone part of any fridge--so avoid those, and you avoid all that potential trouble). My aunt-in-law (is that a word?) has a big beautiful Whirlpool FD that she loves. I think it's this one: http://www.ajmadison.com/cgi-bin/ajmadison/GX5FHTXVA.html The Frigidaire below (see link) is bigger, if that matters to you. And I haven't seen the Samsung you mention. But right there you have three options. There are also Electroluxes like this, but there are some iffy reviews on those and they almost never go on sale. The HUGE advantage of an FD over a SxS is that you can fit wide items in your fridge. Like trays and platters of food, those wooden baskets some fruits come in, pizza boxes, the Thanksgiving turkey and so on. You simply cannot fit those in a SxS because the fridge area is less than half as wide (the divider between fridge and freezer is easily 3" so you lose more than half the shelf width). Why "limp along" on something inferior when there are plenty of huge FD fridges available without in-door water/ice? It'll just cost you more money--it's not as if prices are going to go down. It makes sense to narrow it down to 3 or 4 fridges and then watch to see if one of them goes on sale or finds its way to eBay (some of the sales there include extended warranties)--but it doesn't make much sense to just postpone the decision indefinitely. Personally I also think it makes sense to get an FD fridge with as much REFRIGERATOR space as possible, even if it skimps on the freezer space, because it's a lot cheaper to get a chest freezer for the basement or garage than to get a second refrigerator. Here is a link that might be useful: Huge Frigidaire FD

Soapbox here - Tomatoes grown in hoop houses (or green houses, hot houses) or grown hydroponically can easily be ready in June and can be considered locally grown. Perfectly shaped because they can be manipulated sun-wise with grow lights to get the right light all they way around - different than open field grown, and are bug/virus/critter free. Why they are not quite ripe depends on when they are picked. If a Market is on Saturday they have to be picked Wed to Fri. If they are perfectly ripe on Tuesday they will be mush on Saturday. I have also watched people pick up every single fresh tomato of 200 or so on a table, turn each one over, inspect it, put it down, then walk away. Figure 100 people doing that per hour and that poor ripe tomato is mush. Under ripe are sturdier. Just saying. On the subject of "perfect" - a question I'd like to put to my customers who want their piece of pie "perfect" I should ask (but I am too polite) - "Are you going to photograph it or eat it"? Homemade is not picture perfect because a machine didn't make it!!!!! Same for produce. A few shot holes in beet greens do not make them less tasty, a wriggly carrot might just be a lot sweeter than a perfectly straight one, an asymmetrical potato grown in a field 10 miles away tastes better than a perfect one shipped from Idaho 2,000 miles away and chemically treated to not sprout so you get to eat that stuff too. As for "locally grown", please ask the farmer where his/her farm is. But, 75 miles is acceptable for my Market which means my 7B can easily be almost zone 8 and a full four weeks earlier in warmth then here! It's OK for me. Ask if you could visit their farm, to drive-by, not inspect. Ask the Market Manager if they visit their vendor's farms to verify where the produce they offer comes from. If they don't it means that the Market is a free-for-all. Produce could be shipped in from China or Brazil or Mexico - not local but selling locally. We have a State Farmers Market and before it opens the sales people line up in the way back to buy bushels of produce that were grown all over the State - mostly by high production commercial farms, not mom and pop ones. Those behind the table taking your money may never have set foot on a farm - they are just employees and what they offer is exactly the same as what the grocery store offers, they get it from the same commercial farms. So, local is relative - it only means from the State of NC to that Market here. If you find a local Market vendor who is the farmer (as my Market verifies) then bypass the grocery store with the perfect-perfect produce and buy the slightly imperfect from your Market. We can't grow rhubarb, lemons, or bananas in NC. If your Market has vendors offering things that don't grow in your State, then go to the grocery store. Donna - I am with you. Importing food and eliminating local farming with the lost knowledge of how-to farm puts our food supply at risk, just like Venezuela. 80% of small farms have disappeared. Here is the reality of farming in the US. Farming Changes in US And, here is why: Small Farms - Young People Not Interested When was the last time you heard some little one say they wanted to grow up to be a farmer? I support the farm vendors at my Market for their small local farm products whose prices are higher than the grocery store.