The heart and soul of farmers markets
by Jessica Petzel, posted Oct. 2, 2007
Snapshot of life
The warm sunshine promised for a hot day as the bluegrass music swirled among the bursts of flowers and the rich mix of fruits, vegetables and other farm products. Columbia, known for community and culture, boasts two farmers markets.
The Columbia Farmers Market meets 8 a.m. to noon every Saturday across the street from the Activity and Recreational Center on Ash Street. Boone County Farmers Market meets at the same time on Saturdays, but also from 4 to 6 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays in the parking lot of Columbia Health Department.
Glen Meyer, a 1950 electrical engineering graduate of MU, is now retired. He gardens to pay the bills, but his true love is his honeybees. He originally bought the bees to make the orchard more profitable. The vast array of products sit arranged on a table at the Columbia market.
Diana Dienman sells homemade jewelry that dances in the light. Plants, grown in her greenhouse and most placed in pots she made, take up the other half of Dienman’s stall, also at the Columbia market.
Don Waterman, treasurer for the Boone County market, cultivates his love for coffee and is using the market as testing grounds for business ideas.
A new home?
Growers from both markets agree a feeling of community, which is one of the staples of their lives, would be furthered by a permanent structure.
“Morning can be really intense in the eyes,” Dienman said, but noted the expense to investing in an overhead canvas to keep out the sun and the rain.
Not only would a permanent structure help with the comfort and, therefore, attendance of shoppers and sellers, but it would aid in the quality of the products themselves.
Loading and hauling products makes for a detrimental amount of wear and tear for anyone, said Harmony Creek, a meat vendor of Grey Stone Farms. She said that everyone would benefit from a permanent structure where products could be stored.
“All these vendors with beautiful stuff have to haul it home to toss it,” Creek said, while commenting that she has it good because her products are not as perishable.
The structure would also help with the workload of setting up shop early every Saturday morning on top of all the labor to produce the goods.
“I have to take a nap on Saturday,” Creek said. “It feels like a day and a half, not just a morning of work.”
Columbia has a memorandum of understanding with Sustainable Farms and Markets — the group created to fundraise for the building associated with the Columbia Farmers Market — to build a structure. In other words, the city is prepared to continue with the legal paperwork as soon as the market raises enough money for a building.
“I’m standing in that pavilion 20 years down the road right now,” Dan Kueber said. “You see it too, I know you do.”
The building would not only extend the season of the market and make life easier on everyone involved, but would also serve as a site for weddings, reunions, music events and potentially as an ice rink.
Life as a community
The diverse potential use of the building is an example of the community both farmers markets breed.
“Farmers markets can be transformative experience,” said Bill McKelvey, an MU graduate student who has years of experiences with farmers markets. “You really learn about where your food comes from, learn about the people who grow your food and you can really develop a whole new appreciation for food and for farming.”
The quality of food — in reference to freshness, taste and organic nature — usually gets brought up when discussing the benefits of markets.
Rick Goodman, board president of Boone County Farmers Market, said consumers can build relationships with the farmers by buying directly from the grower. One of the many benefits of that relationship is that the consumer can ask how things were grown, what chemicals where used and so on.
Another large benefit related to community is the benefits farmers receive from farmers markets.
“Markets provide farmers a chance to capture more of the food dollar,” McKelvey said.
The food dollar is a measurement of who in food production gets what percentage of the money consumers pay for their food. Farmers markets allow products to be sold locally. Therefore, money that would normally be spent on transportation and marketing instead go to the farmers.
“Farmers should enjoy a certain quality of life from their practice,” McKelvey said.
McKelvey is not alone in his opinion.
“If farmers are making money at what they’re doing, they’re less likely to sell out to developers or to use the land for something else,” Goodman said. “If they can make a living off of it, they’ll keep doing it.”
Supporting local farmers also supports the local community.
“The idea is that small to medium farmers are getting a lot of their products put in the local community and then it’s going to support the economic base in the community,” McKelvey said. “If you only have a few large farmers, you don’t have as many purchases with the local community.”
Students at MU can also benefit from farmers markets.
McKelvey said that it was where he started to learn how to cook when he moved out of the dorms as a junior, and he used the wise farmers as a valuable resource to pick and prepare food.
“Markets provide a different type of community,” McKelvey said. “If your community is only your immediate peers, I tend to think that’s a limited community.”
The different perspective of the farmers markets does provide for a fun Saturday morning.
“It’s fun! I enjoy it,” Waterman said. “My sister made the comment that I come to the market as much to interact with people as to make money off of it. If I make a couple of dollars, that’s fine, but it’s fun to just get out there and mingle.”
