Elements of a Successful Farmers Market

A thriving, robust farmers market is an asset to any community.

Farmers markets date back to the beginnings of our nation. Often the market was informal, simply a gathering of farmers who drove their team and wagon to the town square and sold their excess produce. The historic Soulard Farmers Market in St. Louis is the oldest continually operating farmers market west of the Mississippi River, dating to 1779. East of the Mississippi, there were even older established markets in the East.

After World War 2, at the beginning of the Baby Boom, grocery stores sprang up in newly built communities and farmers markets slowly faded away. But in recent years there's been a remarkable resurgence of the farmers market model and many communities have embraced and encouraged these markets in their area. It's evident, though, as I travel around the country visiting markets, that not all farmers markets share the same benefits. I've visited farmers markets in many countries, as well, and all share most of the same elements of our best ones in the U.S. I decided to make a list of what elements appear to go into making the most successful farmers markets. My survey isn't precise, it's simply my own observations based on visiting a lot of markets in many states.

Water for vendors and visitors.

First and foremost, the most important element I found in a successful market, is how enthusiastically the city itself encourages the market. I visited several small town markets and the ones that struggled the most and had the fewest vendors, all voiced one opinion: the city where the market was located was barely tolerated by the city government. In some instances, the city had made finding space difficult, insisting the market take the worst spots in town and changing every year where vendors were allowed. Some small towns required expensive permits. However, cities that offered encouragement and welcomed the vendors, had the most thriving markets.

Here's my list of what it takes for a successful farmers market in a community:

1- Encouragement from the city in the way of space for the market. That includes simple things like giving vendors a predictable space, year after year, where shoppers can find them and that is cordoned off so that traffic doesn't present danger to shoppers. Having restrooms open and available for vendors and shoppers is important. Vendors having access to water, both drinking water and for watering their plants during the hours they are selling, is equally important. It was startling to see how many towns with struggling markets, closed their restrooms on weekends, and wouldn't allow access to water. Making vendor fees and applications simple and easy, is also important. When a city tries to price the vendors out of business in the hope the market will go away, is detrimental to all, including the city.

Market location and signs are important.

2- Help from the city with advertising the market, with city businesses taking advantage of the increased traffic flow to the market. Something as simple as letting the market organizers use the city photocopy machine for flyers, can be a big help. Groups such as Rotary, Lions, Elks and others, giving some encouragement can be vital, as well. When civic organizations were involved and told their members about the good things the market was doing for the community, it was always helpful.

Some civic groups get involved in the markets with selling their cookbooks, encouraging new members to join, such as art guilds and neighbor-to-neighbor groups like Welcome Wagon, and find that farmers markets are an excellent way to bring in new volunteers.

Wide assortments of produce entices customers, like these purple and yellow cauliflower heads.

3- Local businesses supporting the market, even in small ways. I participated in a market last year set up on a town square. There were about a dozen vendors with fresh produce 2 days a week. Within the square were 6 restaurants and not a one of the owners or chefs ever bought a single item. People who shopped there were seen by businesses as "blocking traffic" and an irritation to the store owners rather than seeing the increased traffic flow as an asset. (In one town I visited, businesses put up signs on their entry doors, "Restrooms open only for our customers" to prevent market shoppers from going inside).

A diverse population of races, age groups and education levels is a positive thing.

4- A diverse, multi-generational population. Retirement communities and tourist towns seems to struggle the most with having successful farmers markets. Farmers markets bring in younger, well-educated shoppers who see the importance of local, often organic food and want to support area growers. 

Resting places for shoppers to rest and visit are important.

Here are a few additional elements I found at recent markets that are also helpful. Drinking fountains in the area, operational and turned on. Seating areas for shoppers - this can be as simple as benches, walls, anything where shoppers can rest and visit. Space and encouragement for entertainers. The market in Fayetteville, AR (Tuesdays and Saturdays) gives space on all 4 sides of the square for budding entertainers to have an hour to play, sing, juggle, etc. Access to restrooms is important, too. Encouragement for shoppers to bring their dogs, with signs reminding people to clean up after their dogs gave opportunity for shoppers to spend some time with their pets in a social setting.

Encouragement for young musicians to try out their craft.

At one market I found the County Extension Office with a booth and table, with garden insect displays and someone on hand to answer questions about garden bug pests. I found the Humane Society with a booth, and dogs on leashes, looking for adoptive homes for their animals. Politicians, too, had booths to answer questions about their platforms and meet prospective voters.

Shoppers of all ages.

Humane Society introducing pets to prospective new owners.

Allowing beverage and food vendors is important, as well. The best markets I've seen, all had a coffee/beverage booth so shoppers could linger and visit over a cool drink. Food sampling at the bakery booth was allowed and the fruit vendors had little covered sampler displays where you could taste apples, peaches, etc. before deciding to buy the item.

Encouraging kids is just good business for any town. After all, they grow up to be your customers!

This enterprising young man had his own booth, selling his marshmallow guns.

Another important element was activities for kids. The best markets that I visited, in California, Michigan, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri, all had something that made it fun for kids to come. Games, demonstrations, crafters who showed kids how to make something, all made for a total family environment that made it fun for everyone.

Vendors make it fun for people to shop with them.

Farmers markets are here to stay. Some towns and cities struggle to have a market. Memphis, TN, for example, has a small market given its population, while Fayetteville and Bentonville, AR both have large and thriving markets. Branson, MO, with 7 million tourists a year, struggles to have more than 3 or 4 vendors and each year the market is in a new location so it's almost impossible to find (even for us locals). Springfield, MO has 3 thriving markets and is about to build a permanent location for a market. Small towns across the Ozarks attempt to have markets but the ones that succeed, all have the backing of the city, the community and local businesses. It's exciting to see these markets as they grow and become permanent parts of their communities.

Mark Cain of Dripping Springs Farm near Huntsville, AR sells cut flowers.

Visit my website to see the books I've written on herbs and gardening. It's salsa-making time, you might enjoy my Sensational Salsas book this summer!

The Osage River as it looked in 1967, before the river was dammed.

From The Ozarks Mountaineer magazine
The Ozarks Herbalist column, Summer 2012

Rivers once played a prominent role in the life of  towns and communities. A river was the reason many towns were established, access to the river meant access to the goods of commerce by way of boats. A river, too, provided a substantial amount of food to the residents who lived nearby.

Taberville, built just above the banks of the Osage River, was intentionally located where it was because of the river. The Osage Indians were there first with a settlement. The French claimed the area in the 1700s and built Forth Manoa atop the bluffs above the river, just a short distance from the still occupied Indian village. The French were traders with the Indians and shipped beaver pelts and other goods downriver and their very existence and commerce depended upon the river.

During the Civil War there were numerous skirmishes between Union soldiers and Confederate sympathizers throughout the area along the Osage. While Unions soldiers were camped nearby, one of the Union doctors, Dr. Tabor, took notice of the area around the old fort and thought it would make an excellent location for a town. Residents had been forced to evacuate the region when General Order No. 11 was issued by Union General Thomas Ewing, which had cleared out residents of both farms and towns in four counties along the Kansas border of western Missouri.  After the War was over, Dr. Tabor returned to the area along the Osage River and bought up large tracts of the abandoned land.

Dr. Tabor established the town of Taborville (later changed to Taberville through a spelling error on maps). He laid out the town on a grid with streets and alleyways. His new town map covered over what had been the location of Fort Manoa a century before, although as recently as the 1960s, evidence of the outline of the fort remained.

Taberville Hotel, about 1920s.

All three settlements, spanning several centuries, depended upon the river. The Osage Indians lived on the high ground above the river as a defensive position, the better to see approaching enemies. That location, too, meant fewer mosquitoes than nearer the river afforded. The French, also, built on the upland well above the river, again for protection from marauders and to escape the summer insects. Both communities depended upon the river for food, as well.

Baptisms were often saved until there was flood waters near the church.

In each of the three settlements, the river was a character of the community, the beating heart of daily life. The river had personality - raging and destroying in flood time, placid calming and romantic when quiet. The river, when angered and flooding, could rip up centuries-old trees and roll them over and over in the current of the river, moving the giants miles downstream and depositing them in a new location as debris. When placid, the mighty Osage provided fish, frogs, turtles and birds for the dinner table, along with transportation to other areas up or down river.

Me, age 15, Don Wecker, my father and Joe Poling, with the fish we caught.

I grew up on the Osage River and like countless generations of boys and men before me, both loved and feared the river. Every summer from my early teenage years until I left as an adult, I spent myriad hours setting, running, baiting and removing fish from trot lines. I dug fishing worms on the sticky, gummy river banks, I camped, floated, boated and swam in the muddy waters. Fish was as common on our dinner table as pork or beef and I was an almost daily companion of the river.

My great uncle, Paul Garrison, with a channel catfish he caught on a trotline.

Every family in Taberville had a connection to the river in some way or other. Some fished for a living, selling their catch to neighbors and outsiders. Others fished themselves, or knew someone who caught more fish than they could eat and were willing to share. When the river was in flood stage, which meant at least once every couple of summers, the river waters cut off all outside transportation and the town became an island, a prisoner of the river.

These fellas were just back from running their trotlines on the Osage.

Fish was as common as food from the grocery store. Young or old, some part of the weekly groceries included fish. Various families had their preferences to which kind of fish they ate. Some preferred carp or buffalo, the big ones - 15 pounds or more being the best, smaller ones were canned like salmon. Other folks preferred catfish, either flathead, channel or blue catfish. I remember one neighbor who wanted only gar or eels and I took any I caught to them as our household would eat neither of those.

The connection people had to the river was as close as the connection to the church or school. It was an everyday part of community life. From town one could hear any motorized boats that came up the river. If the river was coming up or going down in flood time, someone monitored the changes on an hourly basis and reported to anyone within earshot of the Post Office or grocery store, like it was an ailing patient. The Osage was the blood veins of the community, intertwined, pulsing with life.

Rivers are less important in communities today. The mighty Osage has been tamed and corralled by the Truman Dam near Warsaw, MO, into being the upper reaches of Truman Lake. Life no longer revolves around fish and fishing as part of daily survival. Rivers now are seen as recreational, something to do for fun but no part of daily life depends on the whims of the river. I’m glad I grew up where and when I did, it’s a past I am proud to have experienced.

More of my stories and writing can be found at jimlongscolumns.blogspot.com.

Colorado Potato Beetles

Adult potato beetle.

Ozarks Gardening
Copyright 2012, Jim Long

The Colorado potato beetle is a major pest throughout most of North America. It was first recognized as a pest in 1859 in potato fields in Colorado. The beetle had previously only grazed on buffalo bur, a distant potato relative. But when pioneers who moved West, began planting large fields of potatoes, the beetle adapted to the increased food supply. In the wild, the beetle had to travel up to a quarter mile to find buffalo bur plants, but with the new fields of one crop, the potato, it had only to hop from plant to plant. By the mid-1870s, the potato beetle had expanded its range (at the rate of 85 miles a year),  all the way to the East Coast.

The arrival of the potato beetle caused farmers and gardeners to search for ways to control the bug. An infestation of potato beetles could wipe out hundreds of acres of potatoes in ten days. There were all sorts of inventions, mixtures and unsuccessful attempts at finding a solution. It was only by accident that a gardener who was painting his house, and probably in frustration at the beetles, threw the remains of his house paint on beetle-infested plants. The bugs died! The ingredients in the paint included something called, “Paris green,” an inorganic compound that was commonly used in wall paper, artists’ paints and house paint. Soon chemical companies were providing Paris green to farmers, to be mix with water or dust directly on to the plants. Within three or four years the beetles developed immunity to the poison and lead arsenic was added. Both compounds are highly toxic to other insects including ones that are beneficial in the garden, as well as dangerous to birds, wildlife and most specifically, to the humans who dusted or sprayed the plants (and to those who ate the potatoes later).

Potato beetle larvae, eating leaves.

The cycle continues to this day, with chemical companies readjusting their formulas about every three years as the beetles continue to evolve resistance. One method that large-production potato growers use, is to use an assortment of different pesticides, week by week as the season goes along, trying to stay ahead of the beetles’ adaptations and resistance to the other formulas. Today we know how dangerous lead arsenic and French green compounds were, but many of the newer formulas may prove to be as dangerous.

Larvae cluster together and devour leaves, sections at a time.

Home gardeners can easily prevent potato beetles from being a problem. My method of early planting of potatoes in late January to early February, always misses the emergence of the beetle. By the time I’m digging my potatoes, the beetle is just hatching out and searching for potato plants. But gardeners who planted later, combined with the abnormally early season, will likely experience potato beetles. In small numbers they don’t pose a problem and it’s easy to pick the beetles off by hand and drop them into a bucket of soapy water. Spraying isn’t necessary. To prevent them becoming a pest, be sure to plant potatoes early in the year next season.

Happy gardening!

Free Back Yard Food

In the community where I grew up, most people foraged for food. My family, and all of our neighbors looked for spring food in our backyards, in the woods and along fencerows. Everyone knew morel mushrooms and wild asparagus. Wild greens were looked forward to and a point of discussion when neighbors met on the street corner. “I picked a mess of lambs’ quarters, dock, chickweed and violet leaves” was a common conversation starter in our town in spring.

Violets

Besides those plants there are lots of others, equally tasty. Violet leaves and flowers are edible (leaves in the greens pot, flowers for jelly). Tulip flowers make good “cups” for chicken salad on a plate. Red bud blossoms get tossed into spring salads. (The red bud is a cousin of the pea and if you like English peas, then you already know the flavor of red bud flowers). The red bud pods taste a bit like garden pea pods - just pick them when the pods are under an inch long, to be tender.

Red bud flowers work well in salads.

I still have kale in the garden that over-wintered. It’s now in flower and those are perfectly edible, along with the blooming stalks. Cornflowers, soon to be in bloom, can be added to salads. Dandelion greens are a favorite of many in the Ozarks (boil twice to remove the bitter, then add some butter or bacon crumbles) and the dandelion flowers make an outstanding wine.

Pansies go well in salads for some color.

Johnny Jump-ups and pansies are both colorful additions to a spring salad. The menfolk will grumble about flowers in their salad, but the women in the family will think they’re decorative. And flowers actually have flavor, as well! Sweet Williams flowers, for example, make an outstanding sorbet or jelly.

Lilacs make very tasty sorbet, ice cream and syrups.

Lilacs, too, are quite tasty. You can use the flowers, without the green parts, to make ice cream or sorbet. Lilac jelly and lilac pancake syrup are bit hits on the dinner table, as well. Plum blossoms, as well, are used the same way.

Roses in my rose cake. Recipes are in my book, How to Eat a Rose.

Roses of all kinds, as long as they haven’t been sprayed with chemicals (and not roses from a florist, which aren’t edible) are all tasty. Rose ice cream is a favorite flavor in India and you can easily make it yourself. Roses combine well with regular tea for a boost in flavor. Rose sorbet, rose jam, rose jelly and syrups are all easy to make. The more fragrant the rose, the better the flavor. Rose hips (the fruit of the rose) are also used for tea and jelly. (Lots of recipes are in my How to Eat a Rose book; also you'll find recipes on my Herb of the Year blog, too).

Roses in mint patch.

Be sure you know any of those flowers before you try eating them; consult a good book or on-line to be sure if you’re in doubt. Don’t eat flowers that aren’t listed as edible; for example, narcissus and daffodils are not edible.  But there are a lot of flowers that are edible and fun to eat.
Happy spring!

Firestix and Free Enterprise

The Ozarks Herbalist column, for The Ozarks Mountaineer magazine.

When I was in grade school my friends were always telling me how lucky I was that my parents owned a grocery store. “You can eat all the candy you want!” one said. “I’d live on soda pop and peanuts every day,” said another.

The trouble was, I didn’t actually like soda pop, or simply, “pop” as everyone called. I’d rather have water to drink, or chocolate milk. And while I liked the overall idea of candy, one bite of a candy bar and I was no longer interested. Ice cream cones from the ice cream display, or slices of sharp cheddar cheese from the big cheese wheel in the back room - now that was another thing! But candy simply didn’t interest me.

Sometime in the 5th grade it dawned on me that I was missing an opportunity. Our school didn’t have vending machines like schools do today and many of my classmates were from rural areas, which meant they couldn’t easily stop at a store to buy snacks for the school day. So my first entry into the free enterprise system occurred to me on the school bus one day. I saw the connection between supply and demand and I realized I was the person to connect the two.

The candy called Firestix had just entered the market about 1957, in our store at least. It’s a candy that apparently is no longer available, not in the original form. The candy was about the size of a piece of taffy, wrapped in clear cellophane. It came one hundred pieces to a box, in a handy display and sold for a penny a piece.

I asked my father what his cost of a box of Firestix was and he told me it was sixty cents. Would he sell me a box for me to resell at school? He said he would and so the next day I set off to school with my first box of candy.

I was a shy kid and I’m not sure how I worked up the courage to start selling the candy, but I did. It didn’t take long before word got around on the bus that I was selling Firestix and since it was so cheap, my bus mates could nearly all afford the candy. (Later I learned that some of my classmates searched for pennies on the school ground, a few admitted to “borrowing” pennies from the bottoms of their mothers purses). The added bonus was, Firestix, as predicted by the name, was quite hot; it was made with a good dose of hot cinnamon oil. People in our community didn’t eat hot things, no hot peppers, no hot sauce - no one I knew had ever heard of a jalapeno pepper back then - so the taste was unusual enough it became a challenge for the boys to eat the sweet-hot confection. That first day I sold sixty-two pieces of my candy stash, enough to pay my father the sixty cents I owed him.

Soon kids were hunting me up on the playground at recess. “Do you have more Firestix?” they’d ask. When the bell first rang for recess, classmates would crowd around my desk where I’d set up shop with my box of candy and most days I’d sell the entire 100 pieces in the box before I got back home in the evening.

I quickly learned my classmates tired of the same candy each day and so I began varying the selections. Applestix soon appeared on the market and I began taking those to school.  Sales were best when I mixed a box with Firestix, Sour Applestix, Grapestix and Butterstix flavors. At the high point of my enterprise, I was selling 500 pieces of candy a week and my father was reordering at twice the rate he had earlier. He didn’t seem to mind that he wasn’t making any profit for his efforts but appeared to enjoy the fact I was in the candy business.

The downside and ultimate demise of my candy enterprise was the candy’s rappers. All of the candies were wrapped in clear cellophane, which on the school ground made no noticeable noise. But when stealthily taken out of a pocket during class and unwrapped, made a telltale noise much like the sound of a dry oak leaf being crumbled next to a microphone. That noise irritated the teachers and soon I began to get complaints. The principal put out a school-wide warning to all eight grades in our building that there was to be no candy eating during class.

The candy unwrapping noise subsided somewhat. Classmates soon learned to unwrap their candy at recess and keep it in their pockets, although the added lint and debris made the candy less than satisfying. The idea was to pop the candy into their mouths when the teacher wasn’t looking. But the children in the younger grades couldn’t resist. Knowing that within easy reach was a tasty piece of candy was a temptation too overpowering to be resisted. Some tried to very, very slowly unwrap their candy, which only drew more attention to the process. Others tried to muffle the noise inside their desks. None of those methods worked and within days, the principal came to me and said was forbidding all future sales of candy at school.

The candy business had been good. Since I had no inclination to eat the profits in candy, I had been pocketing approximately two dollars a week. My weekly earnings went into a jar in my room and eventually joined the profits from picking up and selling pecans in the fall and mowing lawns. I bought my first battery-powered transistor radio for $68 with the money I earned. I carried my portable radio with me everywhere I went after school, and it was my first connection to the world beyond my community. The radio added lots more to my life than any amount of candy I could have eaten, but more importantly it gave me my first glimpse into how small businesses operated.



Read more of Jim’s stories in his blogs: jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com, herboftheyear.blogspot.com and ozarksgardening.blogspot.com.

February Garden

Copyright 2012, Jim Long

A mild January has gotten a lot of gardeners thinking about spring planting, even though the likelihood of going through February and March with continuing mild weather is pretty low. Most likely we’ll have the late winter snowstorms the Ozarks is known for. But, that doesn’t mean we can’t take advantage of the current mild weather, either.

Onion plants from Dixondale Farms.

My onions arrived from Dixondale Farms the first week of January they were planted within days. You may recall that last season I had a race between onion plants and onion sets (bulbs). I wanted to see just which method netted the fastest onions. The onion plants won the race by producing good-sized bulbs almost 2 weeks ahead of the sets. Of course I planted only onion plants this year.

So what can one safely plant right now? Onions, certainly because they’re very cold hardy. First plantings of lettuce can be sown now, as well. An old gardener in the town where I grew up in Central Missouri, always scattered her lettuce seed on the south side of her wash house, on top of a snow drift and she always had the first and most productive lettuce of anyone in town.

Potatoes, which I’ve written about before, are always planted in my garden in early February. By Ozarks tradition, peas should be planted by Valentine’s Day and I have mine ready. If you like leeks, you can plant those now. As soon as they’re a couple of inches tall, transplant them into rows, spacing about every 8-10 inches apart.

Larkspur do best when planted in very early spring.

Larkspur, poppies and bachelor’s buttons do well if planted this month. Scratch the soil slightly, scatter the seeds and lightly rake the area and they will come up as the weather warms. I scatter radish seed with the flowers to mark where I planted the flowers and I pull the radishes as they mature.

February is the time to prune grape vines. Don’t prune roses yet, wait until new growth appears in late March, but this month is the time to prune fruit trees. Once trees such as peaches and apples are pruned, you can give them their first spraying of dormant oil to prevent insect problems later.

Poppies, like larkspur, benefit from very early planting.

This is also an excellent time to till the garden. You can till under all the old mulch but more important, the tilling process exposes insect eggs that over-winter in your garden. Grasshopper eggs, larvae of cucumber beetles, cut worms and Japanese beetle grubs, all can be thinned by tilling early. Birds eat some of the eggs and grubs and even better, nights that dip well below freezing will kill the eggs and larvae. Besides, just tilling the garden will get you in the mood for planting.

You will find more gardening information on my other blog: http://jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com
Happy gardening, even this early!

Grow Your Own Pie This Year

Add Some Berries to Your Garden

Blackberries begin ripening the first week of June.

There was a time when berry-picking was as ordinary as going to the grocery store is now. Come summer, families drove out into the countryside and picked blackberries along the roadside. People who had wild black raspberries or gooseberries, looked forward to picking fruit for pies, jams and canning. Now the roadsides are mowed and sprayed and most of the berries are gone. Store-bought berries, when available, are expensive and with few exceptions, shipped from South America. So why not grow your own berries?

Reaching into berry vines to pick isn't the painful thing it used to be, now with thornless vines.

The University of Arkansas has been developing hardy, thornless blackberry varieties for several decades and several licensed nurseries grow and sell them. These new strains of blackberries grow two to three times the size of wild ones and don’t carry the disease that many wild blackberries have. Wild blackberries are often deformed or shrivel before fully ripe from a berry disease. These new thornless varieties are resistant to those diseases. The thornless berries are big, the seeds are very small, the flavor is excellent and the vines are completely thornless. Add to that, they’re easy to grow. My favorites are ‘Arapaho’ and ‘Apache,’ both thornless berries that are great tasting.

Smooth vines, no thorns at all means no scratches, no pain when picking.

Both red and black raspberries do well all across the Ozarks region but don’t plant them together. Growers recommend keeping black and red raspberries at least 60 feet apart but both can certainly be grown on the same property. I keep my red raspberries in rows beside the blackberries and the black raspberries off to themselves. My favorite red raspberries are Heritage, which you mow down at the end of the year since they produce berries on new canes, and Lauren, which, for me, produces an early crop and another one in late summer.

Red raspberries produce for a month or more in summer. Some varieties produce 2 crops a year.

I’ve ordered berries from Pence Nurseries in northwest Arkansas many times over the years and they’re always very helpful in making recommendations. Find them here: www.alcasoft.com/pense/ They are a family business and you’ll need to call and leave a message that you want to order. They’re very prompt and will call you back at the end of the day to take your order. They sell grape, tayberry, gooseberries, currants, many varieties of black and red raspberries and several kinds of thornless blackberries.

The Pence family, from their website.

Berries require full to mostly-full sun, average garden soil and will benefit from being on a fence although it’s not necessary. Some, like Heritage red raspberries, often produce a few berries the first year but will produce a full crop the second year. Other berries produce a small crop the second year then are bountiful every year after that. Happy gardening!

Grow your own blackberry pie this year!