Stone County Locally Grown Online Market

The Stone County Locally Grown(SCLG) Online Market opened for business in late June, 2012.

We encouraged residents to visit www.stonecounty.locallygrown.net as soon as possible to create their customer accounts. With products of all Stone County Farmers Market (SCFM) vendors being featured online, we also encouraged any interested farmers/gardeners to become vendors at SCFM.

When SCLG opened for business, customers placed orders with vendors from Sundays – Tuesdays. Once they visited the site and created their accounts, they also received weekly email reminders telling them SCLG was open for the week and posted available items.  We provided easy-to-understand instructions for ordering…and suggested everyone register…even if they didn’t think they would be ordering online each week. By simply registering, customers would receive the weekly email updates of featured items and stay informed about local food in the County.

Wednesdays – Fridays were days when vendors harvested and prepared online orders. Customers picked up orders on Saturdays at SCFM by 9:30A (unless they made other arrangements with the vendor). We felt the combination of SCLG and our Wednesday and Saturday SCFM market days would provide customers with much more access to foods grown and prepared in Stone County and its surrounding counties. We looked forward to the SCFM 2012 season hoping it would be far more “fruitful” than 2011, the most challenging growing season in decades!

We learned a lot about ordering online in Stone County. It was an idea that residents were not quite ready for. However, as time and innovation moves forward, we look forward to either re-creating the online market and/or helping establish other formats and outlets for easier access to foods produced in the County.

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