What these varying rules have created, then, is a kind of hierarchy of value-added vendors. At the top of the social order is someone like Mark Toigo, the owner of Toigo Orchards in Shippensburg, Pa. His family farm has been transforming raw ingredients into ciders and jams and butters since the early 1970s. Toigo still remembers when he’d walk into the house as a child and see his mom surrounded by “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pints of strawberry jam.”
“I thought that was kind of normal growing up,” he says, laughing at his own memory.
These days, Toigo is a value-added behemoth, with at least a dozen products for sale, from bourbon peaches to bloody mary mixes to basic pasta sauces, some of which are sold both at farmers markets and at retailers such as Whole Foods Market. “We’re not burning down doors with our product at the farmers market,” Toigo says. “It just helps; every little thing we do helps enough to keep us out there.
