MOUNT VERNON — The conference room at the Ohio State University Knox County Extension office on Harcourt Road was filled to overflowing Thursday night with vendors intending to sell goods at farmers markets. Markets are held in Mount Vernon, Fredericktown, Gambier and Centerburg.
The quality assurance training session was the first of two to be held prior to the June opening of the Mount Vernon market. Another training session will be held on Tuesday, April 22, for those who were unable to make it to Thursday’s meeting. All those who wish to be vendors are required to attend one of these meetings and sign an attendance sheet. All vendors are also required to register with the Ohio Department of Agriculture.
ODA spokesman Crystal Stevens got things under way with a slide show defining terms and regulations which apply to farmers markets. A “farm market” is any sales operation that takes place with a farmer selling his own products on his own farm. A “farmers market” is a gathering of vendors selling a mixture of produce, cottage foods and/or licensed food products.
Stevens explained that the required vendors’ registration with ODA is free and can be done over the phone or on the Internet. It must be renewed annually.
Foods that can be sold at a farmers market without a license fall into four categories, according to Stevens.
•Fresh, unprocessed fruits and vegetables can be sold any place in Ohio that local zoning allows, such as on farms, at public markets or at roadside stands.
•Anything on ODA’s list of cottage foods can be made at home and sold without a license, though it must be labeled.
•Commercially packaged non-potentially hazardous foods (typically snack foods that do not require refrigeration) can be sold without a license if the vendor’s display area is less than 100 cubic feet in area.
•Maple syrup, sorghum and honey are all exempt, but must still be labeled.
Items which do require licensing include eggs, chickens, potentially hazardous foods from approved sources (for instance, cuts of meat which require refrigeration), and non-amenable meats (meats not subject to regular inspection).
Stevens defined cottage foods as any baked goods which require no refrigeration, candies which require no refrigeration, jams, jellies and fruit butters. A list of cottage foods is kept online at ODA’s Web site www.ohioagriculture.gov. Items which are not specifically on ODA’s list are not permitted. Cottage foods are further defined as being produced by a person in his or her own primary residence having and using a single domestic stove and oven (or double oven).
One vendor asked about stoves that are publicly sold but billed as “commercial.”
“If the manufacturer wants to market it as commercial style, that’s one thing,” Stevens said, explaining that anything sold to the general public for home use is classified as domestic equipment. Professional equipment, additional stoves or ovens, or operations set up in a room other than the primary food-preparation area for the residence approach commercial kitchen status, and are not allowed for cottage food production.
Items allowed for cottage food production are permitted to have a heating step in their preparation, but they may not require temperature control after preparation. This would include raw and cooked meats, cooked vegetables and garlic in oil. Those items can be sold at the market by licensed vendors, but not by unlicensed ones. Additionally, low acid foods with a rating of greater than 4.6 pH or acidic foods made from adding acid to a low-acid food (for example, pickling cucumbers) are prohibited. This rules out processed beans, various sorts of pickled foods, puddings and sauces.
Also ruled out as cottage foods, according to Stevens, are snack foods such as potato chips, popcorn, trail mix and granola, as well as dried herbs, dried fruits, dry food mixes, home canning, salsas and repackaged foods. Again, she said these items can all be sold at the farmers’ market, they just have to be sold by licensed vendors whose production facilities get inspected on a regular basis.
All cottage foods require labels which must identify the product, list the ingredients (and sub-ingredients) in descending order of weight, list the producer’s name and address, list the minimum net weight of each unit and bear the statement “This product is home produced” in 10-point font or larger. The producer’s street address or post office box can be omitted if the person’s name (or farm’s name) can be looked up in a standard telephone directory. The vendor decides the unit of sale, whether it be each item separately, or sold a dozen at a time.
Stevens said items cannot be packaged on site at the farmers’ market.
“If you take your pound cake to the market to slice and sell a piece at a time,” Stevens said, “you’ve stepped outside your exemption.”
She added that labels may not make nutritional claims such as “low fat,” “salt free,” or “heart healthy” unless federal labeling requirements are met. Further information about this is available at the ODA Web site.
In order to sell potentially perishable items such as cheesecakes, pumpkin pies, pumpkin rolls or meringue pies, vendors need a Home Baker’s License from ODA as well as a license from the local health department.
No license is required for a farmer to sell eggs on his own property, but to sell them at a farmers’ market, a license is required. Farms must be inspected by either ODA or the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The eggs must be labeled and stored in a cooler at or below 45 degrees Fahrenheit; the packaging must list safe-handling instructions, too. The producer or re-packer must be named, as well as the count, date packed, and grade or verbiage stating that the eggs are not graded. Likewise, licensed vending of amenable and non-amenable meats is allowed to vendors who meet packaging requirements and keep the meats cooled to the required temperature.
Jeff Gibson, scale inspector with the Knox County auditor’s office, spoke next, informing vendors that they need to have their scales inspected before the markets start up in June. Vendors can bring their scales to the auditor’s office, or he will come to their house to test the scales. Vendors wishing to reach Gibson can leave a message for him at 393-6825 or e-mail him at .
Local Food Council member John Marsh informed vendors that work on establishing a commercial processing kitchen for local farmers continues. As the planned Newark Road facility at New Hope Industries is not yet ready to go, Marsh said Kenyon College has tentatively given approval for farmers’ market vendors to use the inspected facilities in Gund Commons for a period of one year for canning, baking and flash-freezing operations. It is hoped that after one year the Newark Road facility will be the eventual home for this operation. Marsh said volunteers will be needed to staff the facility, and encouraged interested parties to e-mail him at . He explained that staffing will be voluntary and that nominal fees will be charged to users in order to cover the cost of overhead expenses such as utilities.
Lastly, OSU Extension horticulture advisor Troy Cooper reviewed good agricultural practices. He said that although it is good that Americans’ consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables has risen in the last quarter century, the incidences of food-borne illnesses has gone up as well. He advised concentrating on prevention of problems by avoiding the use of fresh animal manure, being careful about avoiding contamination of bins, clothing, boots, vehicles, equipment and more.
As a demonstration, Cooper had a couple of young volunteers put a powdery substance on their hands and then go wash it off. When the two returned, Cooper turned off the lights and put their hands under an ultraviolet light, which showed remaining traces of the powder as a bright purple glow. This showed that hand-washing needs to be last longer and be more thorough than what people typically do. Cooper recommended singing all the way through the ABC song while washing hands in order to make sure contaminants will be removed.
Cooper said that irrigation water used in a farming operation should be tested on a quarterly basis by providing a sample to the health department. He also recommended sanitization of equipment and to keep records of all farming practices.
Other items of discussion amongst vendors included making recommendations to buyers to bring their own bags and baskets to the market in order to cut down on the use of plastic bags. They also noted that an informal system has been set up of turning in buyers’ left-behind keys, cell phones and packages to market manager Pam Leonard or Troy Cooper.
