Editorial Standards & Methodology
Harvestly Markets is a directory of 7,056 farmers markets, farm stands, u-pick farms, and CSA farms across the United States. This page explains exactly how we source the data, how we verify it, how we signal freshness, and how to get something fixed. We hold ourselves to one rule above all: never present a guess as a fact. Where we don't know something, the listing says so rather than inventing it.
Where the data comes from
Every listing originates from the USDA Local Food Portal, the free public dataset maintained by the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS). We do not buy listing data, accept paid placements, or generate venues. If a market isn't in the USDA dataset, it isn't in our directory. For the full breakdown of which USDA endpoints we use and per-field coverage, see our Data Sources page.
How we verify a listing
The raw USDA record is the starting point, not the finished listing. On top of it we run a verification pass designed to catch the two failures a public dataset can't catch on its own: markets that have quietly closed or moved, and fields that have drifted out of date. The pass uses free, citable sources only — no paid data brokers:
- Live-site check. Where a market lists its own website, we re-fetch that page and read its current content to judge whether the market is still operating — not just whether the URL returns a response, but whether the page still reads like a live market. This catches defunct or relocated markets a simple link check would miss. Dead or parked website URLs are stripped from the listing rather than shown as if they worked.
- OpenStreetMap cross-reference. We cross-check a market's name, address, and (where available) hours against the corresponding OpenStreetMap entry. A close geographic match corroborates that the location is real and current; a mismatch flags the record for review.
- Conservative publishing. Scraped or inferred fields are published only at high confidence, and only to fill a gap the USDA record left empty — they never overwrite USDA data. Anything we can't stand behind is left blank instead of filled with a plausible-looking guess.
How we show freshness
Trust depends on knowing how stale a fact might be, so we surface freshness rather than hide it:
- Per-listing. When a market has passed the live-site check, its page shows a “Verified active — we checked this market's website on <date>” note with the actual date we last confirmed it. The date is the real check date, not a cosmetic timestamp.
- Site-wide. Every page footer shows the date the directory was last rebuilt from USDA data. The directory refreshes on a weekly schedule.
- Honest caveats. Fields the USDA data is known to let drift — operating hours and seasonal dates especially — are flagged as such, with the standing advice to confirm with the market directly before a trip.
What we deliberately don't do
- No paid placement or “featured” listings that bury small markets.
- No AI-generated reviews, ratings, or fabricated vendor profiles.
- No star ratings we can't honestly source — we publish no aggregate rating rather than a manufactured one.
- No tracking pixels that sell your visit to ad networks.
Corrections
If a market we list is closed, has moved, or has hours we haven't caught up to, tell us and we'll fix it. Email the market name plus the correction via our contact page. For listing changes that belong in the authoritative record, the durable fix is to update the USDA Local Food Portal directly — those updates flow into Harvestly Markets on the next refresh — but we'll also correct our own copy in the meantime.
Who maintains this
The directory is built and edited by Quinn Vandt, Editor. More about who's behind it, and why it exists, is on the About page.