Published 8:45 pm Monday, August 10, 2026 By Saman Dara/Aldergrove Star An Aldergrove resident and web developer has built a website to help visitors and locals discover farm stands through an online directory. Stephanie Bendo, who also sells homegrown garlic, raises bees for honey and beeswax products, and keeps chickens for fresh eggs on her five-acre property, said she first came up with the idea to solve a challenge for her own farm. “I first started, because I live on a dead-end street. I had a hard time advertising the fact that I do have goods,” she said. While Bendo doesn’t have a farm stand herself, she didn’t let that stop her from helping other farmers promote theirs. The free online directory helps people not just in Aldergrove or Langley, but across Canada locate nearby farm stands, while giving farmers a way to promote and market their stands. The website localfarmstands.ca currently includes about five listings in Aldergrove, along with others across B.C., including two on Mayne Island. Farmers from anywhere in Canada can add their stands. Bendo believes many small farms struggle with marketing, because it requires skills and time that many producers simply don’t have. “Farmers are not very good at marketing themselves because it’s not part of their skill set,” she said. “You never really had to before. But now you need to be a social media manager. You have to be a marketer. You have to have brand awareness and all these things to sell what you grow in the ground.” Bendo said it was important to her that farmers could manage their own listings rather than using AI to automatically generate or plot farms and farm stands on the map. That way, she said, farmers’ information would not go through a third party. “I want to make sure what’s listed is what the farm themselves wants to have listed and available,” she said. “Some farmers won’t want to have their phone number. They won’t want to have their email,” Bendo said, giving examples. Website visitors can search by product categories such as eggs, honey, garlic, flowers, or seasonal produce. With permission, the website uses a visitor’s location to display the nearest farm stands, or users can enter a location or address manually. Farms can also be temporarily delisted, for example, if they are closed for the season. Bendo shared the website in several local Facebook groups, hoping to build interest among people who were already posting requests looking for farm products. One concern raised by a community member was that people looking to steal farm products would also have access to the website. However, Bendo has a different perspective. “I kind of error on the side that humans are generally good, and they’re your neighbours,” she said, noting that farmers can choose whether or not to list their stand, just as they can choose whether to advertise it on social media. “If you have a farm set on the side of the road, the risk is there regardless.” Bendo described how farmers in Aldergrove and surrounding communities have always supported one another. She sees the website as her contribution to help farm stands that don’t receive enough customers or are just starting out. “I just want to see the public kind of supporting local as much as I can. I feel like this might be a great way to get that connection happening,” she said. “It’s a long history of farmers helping other farmers, and I don’t see why we wouldn’t continue to do so.” Just days after Bendo spoke to Black Press Media, she began building her own farm stand with help from her dad. Now, thanks to the directory she created, there’s a way for people to find it.
B.C. web developer puts farm stands on the map
