The Hampton City Council met on August 15, 2024, to address a wide range of items including consent agenda approvals, public hearings on zoning and short-term rental regulations, and public comments on neighborhood concerns. The council also approved a sister city relationship with Malange, Angola, and received an update on violence reduction efforts showing a significant decrease in shootings.
Who produce the wonderful local products we enjoy? Brought to you by the Virginia Farm Bureau. Here's what's coming up in this week's show. Produce auctions are a pivotal link between farmers and consumers. Chef Tammy helps us figure out some new fig recipes. And we visit Lunaburg County for this month's county close-up segment. Virginia. Welcome back to Real Virginia, everyone. We're coming to you this week from Paris View Farms in Lunenburg County. We'll have more from Lunimburg County coming up later in the show. But first, produce auctions are a vital link between farmers and farmers' markets and grocery stores. Here's a look inside Virginia's largest produce auction held in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley. Auctioneer Lyndon Wenger manages the bidding over a pallet of fresh produce this summer. It's one of hundreds of crates of produce, flowers, and other goods bought and sold to the highest bidder at the Shenandoah Valley Produce Auction in Rockingham County. All of this buying and selling create a pivotal link in the supply chain between farmers and the consumers who enjoy fresh food. Most of our bread and butter buyers here at the Shenandoah Valley Produce Auction are roadside stands and farm markets that you may see around here in the Shenandoah Valley. And most of those places grow, you know, a number of produce themselves, but they can't have the whole variety that they want to offer, so they come here to fill that out. Access to a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables allows vendor John Henry to focus on specializing what his farm does best, such as tomatoes, while buying enough other goods to draw customers to his retail operation. The auction is super useful for our business, particularly for acquisition since we have a roadside stand, and so we're able to get everything that we would need to keep our store stocked from you know April till November. So our buyers, most of them are small business owners as well, just like the growers. And so, you know, they're looking, they for their livelihood, they need to be able to come here, get a wide variety of stuff, get it at a decent enough price that they can turn around and resell it and make money, you know, for their small business that they have as well. Since many farmers' markets are only open on weekends, it could not always be practical for farmers to have a presence at every farmers market within driving distance. Selling goods at auction gives farmers an immediate economic benefit for their work. That in turn gives farmers the option of focusing on one or two specific farmers' markets over the weekend, or skipping the retail side altogether so they can focus on the supply side of growing. This auction began nearly two decades ago. Heat Wolf says local growers saw the model working well in Amish parts of Pennsylvania and decided to give it a try in the Shenandoah Valley. This is great for our growers here in that a lot of them uh don't necessarily want to spend a lot of time going to a place where they're dealing directly one-on-one with the customers and selling that way. And so this gives them the opportunity to focus on what they do best, growing good quality produce. They can bring it in here and they can drop it off and leave 15 minutes later and go back to what they do instead of having to spend hours and hours and hours of a day uh trying to market their produce to people that way. Many of the farmers who do business here are also involved in dairy or other livestock operations. Growing produce helps them diversify, and having a convenient place to sell their products is an added incentive to enter the marketplace. Retail vendors aren't the only customers who buy fresh fruits and vegetables. Small and mid-sized grocers are all drawn here for the opportunity to buy local and support their neighbors. The stuff's fresh. It's picked within 24 to 48 hours. So the shelf life is just a lot longer for us, so we can really get a lot more out of it as compared to a national vendor, you know, where something might sit on a truck for a week before it even gets to you. Fresh flowers are also a significant commodity sold here. Florists and other retailers buy here for many of the same reasons as produce buyers. The opportunity to bring fresh merchandise to their customers. The auction also has a strong relationship with the Blue Ridge area food bank. Heat Wall says they provide over 100,000 pounds of fresh produce to the food bank each year. You don't have to be a buyer or a seller to visit the Shenandoah Valley Produce Auction. Visitors can watch the proceedings, and there's even a cafe if you want to take a break. The facility is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from April to October, and in November on Tuesdays until Thanksgiving. For real Virginia, I'm Burke Muller reporting. This year, the first full week in August is National Farmers Market Week. There are almost 300 farmers' markets tracked by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. And plenty of other places where someone is selling from a booth on the side of the road or the back of a pickup. Many of these markets operate under Virginia food safety regulations and are inspected by the state. To learn more about the rules covering farmers' markets, visit the agency website at the link on your screen.