Buy Fresh Buy Local Guides

The Piedmont Environmental Council’s Buy Fresh Buy Local program helps consumers find local products while building relationships between growers, food artisans, farmers’ markets retailers, restaurants, and institutions.

We launched Virginia’s first Buy Fresh Buy Local campaign in 2006. Today, you can find nine Buy Fresh Buy Local chapters throughout the state of Virginia. The Piedmont Environmental Council is the regional coordinator of three of those chapters—Northern Piedmont, Charlottesville Area and Loudoun County.

PEC creates food guides and marketing materials, conducts educational outreach, and helps to develop new market outlets for farmers by building networks of producers, business owners, community organizations and consumers that are dedicated to the local food movement.

Buy Fresh Buy Local supports local farms, retailers, restaurants and food businesses by promoting local farm and food products to consumers.  Our program includes local food producers of all philosophies who are interested in connecting with local markets. Our buylocalpiedmont.org website and guides include farms that use conventional, alternative, traditional, chemical, and organic practices. We encourage consumers to ask their restaurants and grocers about their local purchasing habits and to get to know their farmers and the farming practices they use  to produce the food you

The printed guides from our chapters collectively list over 580 local food producers and distributors are mailed to more than 310,000 homes in our region!

The Guides

Learn where to find and enjoy local foods in our popular Buy Fresh Buy Local guides (PDF’s linked to below).  You may also want to visit our Buy Fresh Buy Local website or learn more about what PEC’s up to on the Farms & Food section of our website.

Charlottesville Area Guide
Learn more about the guide for Charlottesville and Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson Counties: View the 2023-2024 PDF >>

Northern Piedmont Guide
Learn more about the guide for Culpeper, Fauquier, Madison, Orange and Rappahannock Counties: View the 2023-2024 PDF >>

Loudoun Guide
Learn more about the guide for Loudoun County: View the 2023-2024 PDF >>

Questions about the guides? Please contact PEC at [email protected].

The Interactive Map

In 2020, PEC also relaunched a searchable Buy Fresh Buy Local website, at https://buylocalpiedmont.org, with an interactive map that makes it simple for consumers to find exactly what they need right where they want it.

Women next to produce at a farmers' market.
Sunnyside Dupont Farmers’ Market. Credit: Marco Sanchez
Bellair Farm CSA

Bellair Farm CSA

For farm manager Jamie Barrett of Bellair Farm CSA, being a resource for the larger community is part of the farm vision …
Loudoun Heritage Farm Museum

Loudoun Heritage Farm Museum

The Loudoun Heritage Farm Museum’s motto, “We Preserve The Past—We Educate The Future” says it all. Located within the Claude Moore Regional Park in Eastern Loudoun County, the Museum is governed by a public/private partnership …
Lee's Orchard

Lee’s Orchard

Lee’s Orchard sits about 10 miles east of Shenandoah National Park in Rappahannock County, surrounded by beautiful vistas of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The apple orchard is undoubtedly intertwined with the history of the community …
The Whole Ox

The Whole Ox

'Know your farmer' is a popular phrase these days, but Derek and Amanda Luhowiak, owners of The Whole Ox Butcher Shop in The Plains, think people should get to know their butcher as well. Amanda, …
Farmstead Ferments & New Moon Naturals

Farmstead Ferments & New Moon Naturals

Sitting less than 100 yards from gardens and a variety of fruit trees on a farm in Charlottesville, I met with Dawn Story, founder of New Moon Naturals and Farmstead Ferments. Story tells me that …
Market Table Bistro

Market Table Bistro

Opening a restaurant like Market Table Bistro was always a dream for Rebecca Dudley and Jason Lage, both of whom went to culinary school and later met while working at Lansdowne Resort. They each grew …
Moutoux Orchard

Moutoux Orchard

It’s pick-up day at Moutoux Orchard and it looks nothing like the scene at your nearest grocery store. It is mid-March when I went to visit, there is snow on the ground and members of …
Sheep grazing

Renovating Worn-Out Pastures

Like many Piedmont farms, Over Jordan Farm in Rappahannock has been a pasture-based operation for decades. After 20 years of overgrazing, however, it’s facing issues that are common in the region—poor soil health, a lack …
Michael Clark

Planet Earth Diversified

You might think it unlikely that a farmer as grounded as Michael Clark of Planet Earth Diversified would get his inspiration from the spaceship Apollo 13. But if you take a tour of his farm, …
Doug Fabbioli pours wine

Fabbioli Cellars

For Doug Fabbioli of Fabbioli Cellars in Leesburg, growing his winery and his vines in a way that is environmentally and economically sustainable is a center point of his business philosophy. “Honestly,” he says, “environmental …
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