Now, markets cultivate farmers

Lately, every day is farmers market day for the Stillmans. Direct sales at farmers markets, once a small part of their business, now account for more than 60 percent of their revenue. They have started to grow the specialty crops that marketgoers seek - celeriac, lemon cucumbers, and coosa squash - and that extend their growing season to match the markets’ schedules.

And this year, after adding a seventh market day - Sunday - to their schedule, they have started to turn down invitations to sell at newer markets.

“We’re maxed out,’’ Stillman said as she and her father, Glenn, watched an employee pick and bundle arugula on their farm in New Braintree, some 20 miles west of Worcester.

The Stillmans’ pleasant predicament epitomizes the current state of the farmers market business in Massachusetts. Normally, farmers seek markets where they can sell their wares. In Massachusetts, the markets are hustling to find the farmers. Spurred by the growing demand for fresh, locally grown produce, the number of markets in the state shot up from 88 in 2002 to 199 at the beginning of this month.

“They are competing for more farmers to come to the markets,’’ said Scott Soares, commissioner of the state Department of Agricultural Resources. “The farmers are getting the opportunity to more or less be more choosey about the markets they go to.’’

And the proliferation of farmers markets is changing the way farmers do business, Soares said. Massachusetts farmers are switching from staple items to a more diverse offering of specialty crops that they can sell directly to consumers. Direct sales for Massachusetts farmers, which accounted for $31 million in 2002, had risen to $42 million by 2007, according to the US Department of Agriculture census. And although the amount of farmland in densely populated Massachusetts has not increased, the number of farms has, from 6,075 in 2002 to 7,691 in 2007.

The increasing number of small farmers offering their fresh wares at markets has brought some prices in line with mass-harvested produce available at supermarkets, said Jeff Cole, executive director of the Federation of Massachusetts Farmers Markets. And while local farmers only can produce a small fraction of the food Massachusetts residents need, they have an unmatched ability to adjust to the needs of their customers, and the vagaries of the season, Cole said.

Stillman, 28, personifies the farmers market generation. She grew up on her parents’ farm. She helped out with the bouquets. She graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with double major in agriculture and business. And she met Aidan Davin, now her husband and business partner, at the Copley Square farmers market.

Selling to farmers markets allows her to do her own advertising (“My customers know that they can get a certain level of quality,’’ she said), market research (what are her customers buying from the stalls next to her?), and customer relations (sure, the pumpkins drowned this year in all the rain but would you like to try our coosa?).

Each market has its own personality: at Brookline, an employee who speaks Mandarin comes in handy; in Plymouth and Quincy, shoppers buy enough corn to last their families a week; in City Hall Plaza, couples taking a break from dining out purchase individual ingredients to cook a special meal.

The last market Kate Stillman joined - albeit with a stripped-down presence, just some meat and flowers - was in Acton. The market opened this year, the idea of Jennifer Taylor, a 25-year-old lab worker at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Taylor figured Acton could support a farmers market, a supposition backed up by the steady stream of customers that flowed one recent Sunday morning along the 12 stalls lined up on Pearl Street, in the shadow of the white clapboard Christian Science Society church.

But finding farmers was tough, Taylor said. One farmer who eventually joined her market, Ray Mong of Applefield Farm in Stow, had originally turned her down.

“I had decided that I don’t have the manpower or the energy to do another farmers market,’’ said Mong, who runs a farm stand and sells at two other markets. Mong, who estimated that 30 to 40 percent of his vegetable sales come from farmers markets, changed his mind when his son, Alex, 21, promised to man the Acton stall. Although he is happy with the Acton market, Mong is turning down other farmers markets. “I could not do any more,’’ he shrugged.

To woo farmers, markets compete by offering lower prices for operating a stall, easier parking, better locations. They also try to attract a broader range of customers by accepting electronic banking transfers and coupons used by people on food assistance programs. Once a market earns a good name, the tables can turn. In January and February, when Donna Ingemanson was leading an effort to start a farmers market in Braintree, she researched the area’s demand for locally grown produce and pitched farmers on the advantages of her location.

She went through “a couple of hundred’’ vendors before she finally was able to secure the lineup of 16 or 17 that currently sell at the market on Saturdays. She said the market has been such a success that she now has a waiting list of farmers hoping to get in on the action.

One of the farms that sells at Braintree, C.N. Smith Farm Inc. of East Bridgewater, makes most of its money from its pick-your-own operation and a garden center. Normally, after Labor Day, it would stop selling at farmers markets - which account for about 20 percent of its sales - and focus on the hay rides, school tours, apple-picking and pumpkin-picking that make the fall its best season. This year, the owner, Chris Smith, decided to stay in Braintree through the end of its season on Oct. 31 - to keep his place.

“We want to continue with the Braintree market next season,’’ Smith explained.

David Filipov can be reached at filipov@globe.com.