Photo of the month: New growth provides hope and excitement for the upcoming Farmers' Market season.

Congruent with the seasonal nature of most Farmers' Markets and many farms, we are placing FreshNews (our newsletter) on hiatus for the winter -- a temporary move -- while we organize and evaluate our next steps. When we return we will be more relevant and interesting because we intend to incorporate your ideas for making it better. Here's how we will do that.

Below you will find some questions we'd like you to answer. We want to know what you like and what you want to add that will make our communication more meaningful and compelling. As you know, our goal has been to advocate the benefits of shopping at farmers' markets. We've created stories that highlight real people who enjoy their farmers' market experiences and have made the market a regular part of their life. To continue with that goal, we want more stories. These can come from you. Have you a memorable farmers' market experience you'd like to share? Do you have pictures? We'd like to publish more of your stories and share them with all of you. Send us what you think will compliment the stories we have already published. We'd love to hear from you and are asking for your help.

We're also interested in hearing how you feel about what we have done so far -- the content, style and delivery of our web site. Our goal is to become more significant to people who shop for food because we know that supporting sustainable local food sources is making a difference to local communities, small farmers and consumers who love fresh foods. We have gained a foothold in the farmers' market blogosphere and we'd like to increase our impact. We're proud of what we have accomplished and recognize there is much more to do. As Farmers' Markets become more significant in the sustainable food movement and the quest for local, fresh, healthy, good-tasting food continues, we want to be part of it.

Questions

Below are the questions we are asking on our Share Your Thoughts" form, or you can drop an email to Mike at the address given at the bottom of this page with some of your thoughts. We'd like to hear from you about the following subjects:

1. What subjects did you find most interesting? Exemplary markets, farmers, food preparation, links, video features, the Forums, the Virtual Farmers' Market? What did you like? Why/why not?


2. What is your favorite section of the web site? (Feature Story, Newsletter -- columnists or articles, Forums, Videos, Buy-Direct -- The Virtual Farmers' Market, Links) Why?


3. What would you like to add to the web site that isn't there now?


4. What would you like to eliminate?

We've published our goals (click to see). Let us know how we've done. Be honest -- we can take it.

E-mail your thoughts and ideas to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it today. To thank you we'll send a free gift that you can use throughout the next year.