Athens Locally Grown has closed.

Here are some frequently asked questions:

And here are some answers:

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 any time after that email goes out, but no later than Tuesday at 8:00 p.m. Orders should be placed here on our website, but if you are having troubles you can respond directly to the e-mail. Ordering through this web site is Locally Grown’s 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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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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So there's no minimum order amount?


Nope. Order as much or as little as you want, from the farms that you want.

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How and when do I pay?


When you place an order, you are committing to paying for those items ordered. We take payment in several ways:

1. You can pay into your account in advance ( via check or cash in person, or online via Credit/Debit card), and draw down over time. This is a very convenient method, since you only have to think about it every once in a while, but you can also:

2. Pay via Venmo to @athenslocallygrown. Or:

3. Pay via credit/debit card online when you place your order. We support all Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, JCB, and Diners Club cards. Or:

4. Pay via cash, check, or credit/debit card when you pick up your order.

If you pay via credit or debit either online or in person, we will add on 3% to cover our processing costs. Cash, check, and Venmo are free.

Due to changes in the Federal Food Stamp program, we are no longer able to accept EBT.

We will pay the growers for you on your behalf. If you fail to come pick up your items, you will still be expected to pay the amount due.

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Are there membership fees?


To help us provide farm tours, educational programs, and to help us with our overhead costs, we ask that you pay an annual fee of $20 per household for one calendar year. You are welcome to try us for two orders before officially becoming members.

The membership fee will be automatically added to your third order.

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Are there taxes or other charges added to my order?


The growers set their own prices, and are all-inclusive, including any taxes (like gasoline at the gas station, or food at the airport). Since the growers are selling directly to you, they (not ALG) are responsible for collecting and reporting sales and other taxes.

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When and Where do I pick up my order?


Our current pickup location is at 580 Tallassee Rd. Athens, GA 30606, across the street from the Waseca Learning Environment and the Greater Athens Church of God. When you place your order, you’ll choose an hour-long time slot between 5pm and 8pm on Thursday.

We are still getting new customers every week (and we love seeing new masked faces!) so for all of you here’s a quick run-down on how Thursdays go:

  • Don’t arrive at the beginning of your pickup window if you’ve got that flexibility. We fill the bags alphabetically (because it’s easier on us that way), but your arrival time or last name has no bearing on what items you get. The growers fill orders based solely on the time you placed your order, so that’s all been long decided by Thursday. Take your time getting there and that’ll naturally spread things out a bit. Flatten the curve, if you will.
  • I’m bad with faces as it is, and masks make it even harder to recognize you and even hear you when you give your name. Many of you had papers with your name written in big letters we could read through the window, and that is wonderful. If you think to do that same, it’ll make things even smoother.
  • The pickup loop does have a fair bit of room, but we don’t want you backing up into Tallassee. If you arrive faster than we can deliver orders, we may ask you to pull ahead into the loop and circle around. That may mean that some people who arrived after you may get their food before you, but as I said above, that doesn’t affect at all what items you get when things run short.
  • We’ve still got three pickup windows, and it’s totally ok if you come later than the slot you chose. If you come early, odds are high that we haven’t filled your bags yet and we may ask you to come back. Tallassee is a pretty drive, and I recommend taking it to the county line and back, just for the scenery.
  • We’re not accepting in-person payments unless absolutely necessary. We’ll have a drop box for checks or labelled envelopes of cash, but we greatly prefer Venmo payments to @athenslocallygrown or online payments through a card tied to your account. Venmo is free, and card payments have a 3% processing fee.
  • We can not accept any recycling just yet, though that may change once we get settled.
  • We cannot take your own bags or bins out of your car and fill them up
  • If you’d like to go through your items before you leave to make sure you’ve got everything, or that we didn’t mix up people’s items, feel free to pull into the lot and have a look.

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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.

We’ve got photos of the whole process (taken at our previous location, where we were much smaller), with captions, so you can see for yourself.

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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.

For a more detailed explanation as to why we have to operate this way, please read our weblog entry from June 18th, 2009.

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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:

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 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.

Supporting a way of life: The number of small farms in the United States 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.

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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.

To use the word “organic”, a grower must register through the USDA and keep up with a tremendous amount of paperwork. The process is very expensive and intensive, and certainly favors the larger factory farms over the small family farm.

The state of Georgia has seen that, and has given the small producer who sells only a few thousand dollars a year of produce a means to register with the state department of agriculture. A few of our growers have gone that route, and they can legally use the word “organic” in Georgia.

Another system is “Certified Naturally Grown”. This nation-wide program seeks to correct the problems with the USDA certification system. The standards are just as strict (and in some cases, more so) as the USDA Organic program, but there is no 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. Several of our growers have gone this route.

Finally, a few growers are not certified by anyone but 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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How can I sell through this market?


During this time of pandemic, we’re not accepting new grower applications. Once this passes and we’re better able to review growers again, I’ll have more information here.

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