About the data

Where the data comes from

Every market on this site is a listing in the USDA Local Food Directories, the farmers market directory run by the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Marketing Service. Markets enter their own listing there; for some listings the USDA collected the details from the market's own website, and each page says which. The name, address, coordinates, season, days, hours, products and program flags come from that listing, and every page shows the date the USDA recorded for it.

Town names missing from a listing are filled from the ZIP code's postal place name in the GeoNames postal-code table (CC BY 4.0), and the page says so where that happened. ZIP-code search uses the US Census Bureau's 2024 ZCTA gazetteer.

Hours read from market websites

Most USDA listings collected by web scraping carry no days or times. For those markets we fetched the website given in the listing and read the days and hours only where the site states them plainly (a day of the week next to opening and closing times). Lines about one-off events, monthly events, vendor set-up, office hours or a different market on the same page are not used, and a page that gives two different times for the same day is not used at all. 298 markets have hours read this way; each such page says so and shows the date the site was read and a link to it.

Hours read from state directories

Some state departments of agriculture publish their own farmers market directory, separate from the USDA file. Where a market still has no days or times after the two steps above, we match it against its state's directory by name and city and take the days, hours and season from there, the same way and with the same rejections as the website pass. 367 markets have hours read this way; each such page says which state directory and the date it was read.

Hours read from Facebook

Some markets give only a Facebook page in their USDA listing, with no separate website. Where the page's own About text states days and hours plainly, we read them from there, the same way and with the same rejections as the website pass. 9 markets have hours read this way; each such page says so and shows the date read.

How open and closed is computed

When a listing carries a season with days and times, the page computes open or closed from the current time in the market's own time zone. It knows nothing about weather cancellations, holidays or a season that ended early. When a listing has no days or times, the page says so instead of guessing.

What this site is not

Farmers Market Hours is an independent directory. It is not a government site and has no connection to the USDA or to any market. Nothing here sells produce or takes a payment for a market.

Corrections

If a market has moved, closed or changed its days, report it. Markets can also update their own USDA listing, which this site picks up at its next build.