On a sweltering late afternoon last week, Dale Ball went shopping, strolling through the stands at the weekly Purcellville Farmers Market.
Stopping in front of the white tent of Roxley Farms, Ball studied a marker board listing cuts of meat and prices. Pondering, she asked the man behind the table, "Were they happy cows?"
"Let me show you the pictures! They're dancing in the fields," replied Chris Lotze, who would know, since he and his wife, Evie, raise the cows that they sell at the market on their 75-acre farm in West Virginia.
Lotze can tell Ball exactly what the cows ate and when, how they were slaughtered and what kind of life they led. That kind of detailed information about food origins, out of the mouth of a local grower, is what brings Ball -- and an increasing number of others -- to farmers markets across the region.
To keep up with demand, the markets are innovating with the times. The introduction of beef and other meat products, kept on ice and sold in vacuum-sealed packages, has been one such change.
For Ball, a vegetarian, the extension of the farmers market ethos of all-natural products grown locally to meat has been a welcome change -- she eventually bought several bags of hamburger meat to serve to guests at a party this weekend.
"We're eating more and more organic," she said. "If you've got to eat meat, this is the way to go."
The markets are drawing in new crowds, too, with a spiraling expansion of products, including breads, honey, and, of course, dozens of varieties of produce.
"Over the past five years, there's been a diversification," said Floyd Blethen, who sells shiitake mushrooms at the Purcellville market. "There are more different kinds of items."
Regardless of the product, the key to selling is in-depth information about the food's purity.
For a time, the Round Hill Arts Center sponsored a weekly all-organic market. Hope Hanes, artistic director for the center, said the market was becoming more and more popular, the "organic" label bringing in shoppers from across the region.
"That was definitely the draw," she said. "I had people coming out from Leesburg because they want to go to an all-organic farm."
