Farm to Family, operated by Mark Lilly, is a bus that stops all over Richmond so that you can pick up fresh produce from local farmers any day of the week. The goal of Farm to Family is to provide local, sustainable and affordable produce to the Richmond metro area and to provide small farms with a means of distribution year round. Mark also hopes that it will foster a community of healthy eaters and growers and lead towards a more sustainable food system.

Farm to Family is currently running a meat, dairy and grain CSA through the winter along with its regular lineup of Virginia grown and produced food. Farm to Family has sourced meat from Polyface, dairy (butter, yogurt, cheese and milk) from Mountain View and grain from Judy’s Bread and more.

It is interesting to note that Good Magazine recently held a competition to “redesign your farmers’ market” for L.A. county and the winning entry was titled Farm on Wheels. The concept involved “mobile markets” like Farm to Family to distribute local food throughout the city. Read about the competition here. It is good to know that Mark, and consequently, Richmond is ahead of the curve and already has some parts of a more local and mobile food delivery system in place (at least as far as Good Magazine is concerned). New York City has also begun to introduce mobile food stands.

The bus in Carytown in front of Mezzanine, now it can be found near Ellwood Thompson’s on Thursday and any other day it is in Carytown:

It was fun to look and buy produce and see cars whiz by outside the window:

Completing a purchase:

and potatoes:

To learn more, visit Farm to Family’s website.