At the Great American Egg booth at the Bend Farmers Market last week, Jaymie Exley-Peat, an intern at the farm, showed a customer pictures of the egg-layers at work.

“They’re well-treated,” she said, flipping through shots of the chickens roaming on grass at the Powell Butte farm.

The customer, Bobbi McAllister, was convinced. “You know you’re getting good food and fresh food,” McAllister said. “They’re organic, and they’re real eggs.”

Plus, with recent news about the conditions in big factory chicken farms — where inspectors found rodents, 8-foot-high piles of manure, and salmonella contamination — knowing the source of the farmers market eggs was a draw, as well.

“It’s kind of scary to be buying eggs now, if you don’t know where you’re buying from,” McAllister said.

With a number of farms in the Central Oregon area, producing everything from eggs to beef to vegetables to heritage turkeys, residents have a number of opportunities to check the source of what ends up on their plates.

“Call the farmer, go visit the farm,” said Gigi Meyer, who owns Windflower Farms east of Bend. “If you really want to know how your food’s being produced, go see it. You can have a picture in your head when you eat your tomato.”

Loretta Spahmer, an owner of Pine Mountain Ranch, said she and her husband welcome questions from their customers, who can buy poultry, buffalo, yak, lamb, heritage turkeys and more from the farm nine miles east of Bend.

“We say, ‘Get fresh with your local rancher,’ ” Spahmer said.

Still, even with produce, meat and eggs from local farms, there is the chance of bacteria contamination, said Emilio DeBess, Oregon public health veterinarian.

“People need to be aware that there’s bacteria everywhere,” he said. Customers should wash their hands after touching eggs or raw meat, and should be sure to cook products thoroughly.

But while small farms aren’t immune from contamination, they are better able to keep track of individual animals, said Meyer.

“Our girls have names,” she said of her egg-laying hens. “We know when someone’s not feeling well.”

And at the Great American Egg farm, the chickens raised for meat and eggs, as well as turkeys and grass-fed pigs, are humanely raised and humanely butchered, said Anita Hoffman, who owns the farm with her husband. The pigs never see concrete, and the animals get fresh grass.

“Our animals are pretty happy — they all have one bad day,” she said.

Places to get it

For Central Oregonians interested in getting to know their local food producers, there are a number of ways to track down the fruits, vegetables, meats and more they can offer.

One way, said Jim Fields of Fields Farm, is for people to try their own hand at growing vegetables, and just see how they like it.

Or customers can check out grocery stores that carry produce from Central Oregon or the Willamette Valley, he said, like Nature’s General Store, which buys from local growers, and Devore’s Good Food, which carries a variety of organic produce.

Newport Market carries local produce when it’s available, from local tomatoes to beef to Tumalo Farms cheese, said manager Spike Bement. Whole Foods also carries locally grown items, said Katrina Van Dis with the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council, and Ray’s Food Place has some local options. Some larger stores offer items from around the region as well.

Farm stands, like the one along Southwest Century Drive in Bend, also offer produce from local farms.

At places like Nature’s, said farmer Sarahlee Lawrence of Rainshadow Organics, customers can even ask the grocers about the products and request that something different be ordered.

“Those places have relationships with local farmers,” Lawrence said, adding that other stores carrying local produce include Divine Earth in Sisters and Schoolhouse Produce in Redmond.

There are also a number of ways, and a number of websites, to help local-food fans contact farmers directly.

Customers can talk to farmers and ranchers at the various farmers markets around town.

“That’s the great connection, is going to the farmers market first and talking to them,” Hoffman said.

Everyone there is representing their farm, and can answer questions about whether they spray the fields or add pesticides, or how they treat their animals. And the people there all talk to one another, she said, and can point out other farms if there is something specific the customer wants.

Beyond the markets

But many local farmers do not have booths at the Bend Farmers Market — Fields Farm is the only Central Oregon produce grower represented, although several meat and egg vendors from the area have spots.

So people looking for additional local farm options can check out several websites, which list the area farms and ranches and what they offer, including www.localharvest.org and www.centraloregonfoodnetwork.com. The Central Oregon Locavore site, at www.localfoodmarketplace.com/bend, allows customers to order local produce online, as does Agricultural Connections, at www.bendcsa.com.

Nicolle Timm started Central Oregon Locavore in April, as an online farmers market, she said. Customers can come to one place to see what’s available and order food, while producers can put their wares on the site and hopefully save time otherwise spent on marketing, advertising and making multiple deliveries.

“The site is meant to sort of unite the producers into one group,” Timm said, “and save them time so they can expand, they can increase their production and do what they do best, which is farm and raise food.”

The Central Oregon Food Network is an evolving site, said Dana Martin, Oregon State University Extension Service faculty with the small farms program. It’s designed to be a resource for people to look up growers in the area.

“We’re in kind of a neat time, where people are really actually starting to care about their food,” Martin said. “For so long, it was: They go to the store, it’s there. Now they’re really caring about the source, getting to know their farmers, getting to understand what’s involved in producing food.”

Many farmers offer Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, shares, an arrangement in which a customer signs up for a box of food from the farm each week, for a certain period of time. The contents of the box vary with what the farm has fresh that week.

“A lot of us have CSAs, and that’s really the most direct way for a person in a community to be a part of their local farm, and to really feel a sense of local agriculture,” Meyer said. “They get to see how the season progresses. … It becomes an adventure, really, in farming for people living in the city.”

It also becomes an adventure in eating, said Lawrence, of Rainshadow Farms, who noted that getting a CSA box is a different way of planning meals, since you get the vegetables first and then figure out what to make.

“They arrange their meals around what’s fresh now,” she said.

And customers know where their food is coming from.

“There’s a certain comfort in knowing your farmer,” she said.

Where to buy locally

Websites that offer lists of local farms, or offer the chance to purchase different items, include:

• www.localharvest.org

• www.centraloregonfoodnetwork.com

• www.localfoodmarketplace.com/bend

• www.bendcsa.com

Locations of farmers markets around Oregon can be found at www.oregonfarmersmarkets.org.