LOCAL FARMS: Imperial’s Garden

Imperial’s Garden is a family operated farm located in Wapato, WA at the heart of Yakimas Lower Valley. From Seattle the farm is about 150 miles away and some would consider this far, but for the people of the Yakima Valley it makes it a great opportunity to expose themselves to shopping local.  

Imperial’s Garden has been actively involved within its own and surrounding communities since 1989. Since then, the farm has grown dramatically over the years and has expanded its outreach physically with about 460 acres of farmland. This farm has many fresh fruits and vegetables and not only is it creating safe and environmentally friendly produce, but it is also creating jobs for the community.

Just this summer, Imperial’s Garden managed to build a new location center that would allow enough space to occupy all their produce, enough parking space for customers, and a sanitized place. This new location is perfect because it allows people to find many of their favorite produce with the idea of one stop shopping and the farm also allows customers to pick their own fruits and vegetables if they would like. Giving customers options is always best as it allows customers to feel like they are welcomed and in control of how they pick their own produce.

 Shopping local is one of the most important ways as it allows people to ask the farmers questions about their produce. Customers can ask questions that will enable them to see in what conditions they are producing their fruits and vegetables, if they are using any type of chemicals to grow their produce, how they pick their produce, etc… This also creates the concept of getting to know who your farmers are and in the end this could establish a friendship between the grower and the buyer.

Keeping the food miles to a minimum also helps the environment because it stops the footprint of fossil fuels. In some cases a majority of produce that are sold in grocery stores travel from a long distance which uses up more fossil fuels to get produce to certain locations and is not doing its best to establish a clean environment. It could also be said that buying local is the best way to shop as it is both rewarding for yourself and the environment; and it also is the most delicious way of eating produce because knowing that it came from a short distance of where you live makes it that much better.