EAST LONGMEADOW -- The tomato plants are just now blossoming and the first sweet corn is just coming out in tassel on this first day of summer at Meadowbrook Farm in East Longmeadow.
Some of that local bounty may soon be headed to Boston Public Market, a new eat-local enterprise located a short walk from The Hub's historic Faneuil Hall.
On Monday, State Sen. Eric P. Lesser, D-Longmeadow, invited buyers and managers from Boston Public Market to tour several Western Massachusetts Farms. In addition to Meadowbrook, stops included Austin Brothers Valley Farm in Belchertown, Red Fire Farm in Granby and Randall's Farm in Ludlow.
Lesser organized the tour after noticing the Boston Public Market, which purports to feature New England agriculture and was built with a state investment, offered produce from Rhode Island to Maine but very little from Western Massachusetts.
"Part of our economic development strategy is to build on the things we in Western Massachusetts do well," Lesser said. "We are a manufacturing center. And we also have all these wonderful farms. We need to stitch together the economies in the various regions of our state."
The Boston Public Market opened a year ago above the Haymarket MBTA stop near Boston's City Hall. Thirty-seven vendors rent space from the nonprofit association that runs the facility.
The market already features some Western Massachusetts vendors, including vegetable farms in Hadley and South Hadley as well as Chestnut Farms meat from Hardwick.
"We would certainly give priority to Massachusetts farms," said Boston Public Market CEO Cheryl Cronin. "We are all about local food. We want to get across the idea that food that doesn't have to travel as far tastes better, is better for the farmer and is better for the environment. We'd certainly love to have more Western Massachusetts products."
The Boston Public Market also gives Western Massachusetts growers and food producers -- fish and seafood processors, bakeries, apiaries, a brewery -- a toehold in Boston from which they can grow their brand.
"We have a lot of events," Cronin said. "We do a lot with social media."
She said farmers can rent their own stalls at the indoor, year-round market, or they can sell wholesale to a stall vendor who works with a number of farms.
Meadowbrook Farms owner John Burney said only a small percentage of the vegetables he and his employees grow on 300-acres -- spread over 25 parcels he owns or leases -- is sold at the well-known farm stand located right off Somers Road.
"At 300 acres, we are big enough that we have to start looking even beyond this area in order to find a market for our produce," he said.
He distributes pretty widely locally, though. Springfield-based Big Y, with its nearby distribution center, is his biggest customer.
"They work out perfectly for us," he said.
He sells to other supermarkets and does some store-to-store deliveries around the region. He also sends workers with produce to the New England Produce Center wholesale market in Chelsea every day.
His tour for Lesser and members of the media began with the farm stand. At this time of year, he's wrapping up the sale of garden and flower-bed plants.
Fire-engine red strawberries are in, and he led folks past a miniature forest of broccoli.
From there, the group headed to a 90-acre farm Burney owns a five-minute drive away. There, on what was once a small dairy farm, workers pushed wooden stakes into he ground near blossoming tomato plants. Later, they'd weave twine around the stakes so the tomato plants can climb as they grow heavy with fruit.
Burney also showed off row after row of pepper plants and pointed to the hillside where sweet corn stalks grow. Hoping for rain this week, he'd like to avoid having to irrigate the corn.
The vegetable plants are all on drip-line irrigation, but a shower Monday night or Tuesday should keep the corn growing for another week.
"It will be ready in July," he said of the crop.