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COUNTRY COMES TO TOWN WHEN LOCAL GROWERS LAUNCH A NEW EFFORT THIS WEEKEND
sk any relative newcomer to Athens: based on this
town's style, its reputation as a hip, progressive city,
there have long been plenty of things you'd expect to
find here, but which have taken time to show up. The
past year or so has been a good one for breaking the pattern,
as both the now-truly-local brewery (of course!) and the down
town arthouse cinema (duh!) have opened up. These are all
signs of progress, but still, great things happen in other cities,
and once they arrive, Athens asks, “Where have you been all
my life?"
The latest in that lineage: an ambitious good-sized farmers'
market—a place not only to buy local produce, but to social
ize on a Saturday. Countless cities have markets that mean
something to local residents, and this Saturday, Athens begins
catching up with the pack.
No, this town has not been without mar- m
kets in the past. The most constant and vis- ^
ible one lately has been the "Athens Green S
Market" held outside Big City Bread since 3
2001. From 2003 to 2005, a small market
spent summers on College Avenue beside
City Hall with the blessings of the Downtown
Development Authority (but without the
"organic" or "sustainable" labels affixed
to the Athens Green Market). Before any of
those, there was the old market held under
the pavilion at the Cooperative Extension
Service property on West Broad Street, just
east of Hawthorne Avenue. That market closed
in the 1990s after decades of service. Also,
since 2001, there's been the virtual, web-
based market called Athens Locally Grown,
which features weekly pick-ups of pre-ordered
goods, but has never done any real advertis
ing or promotion.
In the past year, Locally Grown saw its customer base
grow more than five-fold. Organizer (and farmer) Eric Wagoner
reports that a little under 200 customers at the start of the
2007 growing season, with 30-40 orders per week, "exploded"
into around 1100 customers now, with about 200 orders per
week. The farmers selling through Locally Grown, Wagoner says,
are reporting "about 57,000 per week combined, here during
the slow part of the year, when most farmers' markets in the
state aren't even open yet." What's that tell you? Simple: local
interest in local food is booming.
Also in 2007, Athens' Craig Page founded a nonprofit called
PLACE (Promoting Local Agriculture and Cultural Experience).
Page says he began the endeavor hoping to promote the many
benefits of local farms and local food, from land preservation
to health and nutrition to boosting the local economy. He soon
found, though, that interest was high enough—and fellow
activists numerous enough—that the community-based work,
of promoting the concept of local food was already underway.
Then Page looked for a niche. What could his new organiza
tion do? What role could it fill that wasn't being filled? "When
PLACE incorporated," he recalls, "I started talking to people,
and they were like, 'What about a farmers' market?' So I started
saying, 'What about a farmers' market?"'
"It's something that's been talked about over the last few
years," Wagoner says. The Athens Green Market—successful as
it's been—is ultimately limited by the typical negatives like
a lack of space to expand and inadequate parking. "There was
just never any other place to go to," Wagoner says, "and farm
ers being the busy people that they are, they never got up the
gumption to find another location." .
Farmers are also independent-minded, Wagoner points out,
so it's been important for Page's organization to serve as a
glue to hold them all together toward a common cause. That
process began with a series of "Athens food activist networking
sessions" over the past year; county extension agent Amanda
Tedrow has been a key ally too, Page says, and sponsorship
under the nonprofit umbrella of Common Ground Athens is part
of a move toward seeking grant money to help sustain the
market in future. A lot of energy went into finding a suitable
location. Downtown didn't work out for various reasons (city
officials were apparently jittery about the large Downtown
Development Authority parking lots along Dougherty Street),
so the geographic search widened early this spring: ("I started
calling the churches down Prince," Page recalls, "and they all
told me no.") Eventually, Bishop Park was floated as a site, and
all the growers were enthusiastic: it's got plenty of parking, a
covered pavilion, a basic kitchen and boasts easy accessibil
ity from nearby neighborhoods as well as an in-town-enough
location.
Still, pulling all the pieces together—and being ready to
open for business at the start of the growing season—hasn't
been easy. "I'm excited," Page says now. "It's going to happen.
I was worried in February that it wasn't going to happen...
Now that I've gone through the process, I can understand why
it's taken so long for Athens to get—or 're-get'—a farmers'
market."
What kind of market are we talking about? Its name is
"Athens Farmers Market, LLC: Local and Sustainable." You won't
see the word "organic" attached to this market, that being a
designation defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that
doesn't fit well for small farmers. The market's growers will,
however, be required to follow the guidelines of the alterna
tive "Certified Naturally Grown" designation put together by
the National Organics Program (though without actually having
to have that program's stamp of approval). Prices, Page says,
will reflect the growers' sustainable-land approach—as well
as what he calls the "true cost of food"—but shouldn't be out
of line with other presently available organic and sustainable
foods. Growers will also come from within a 100-mile radius of
Athens, and all goods for sale will be homegrown and hand
made. (Rules like those are, unfortunately,
necessary to prevent the pitfalls of some mar
kets, where it's not unheard of for goods to
be trucked in.) Also, in keeping with another
booming local scene, a quarter of the market's
booths are open to local craftspeople. All of
the guidelines, as well as an application to
join the market, are online at www.athens-
farmersmarket.net.
Also on the docket: live music, cooking
demonstrations, and down the line, prepared
foods (though lOOOfaces Coffee and Luna
Bread plan to make their goods available at
the grand opening) and social outreach com
ponents, like apprenticeships to teach hands-
on small business skills to local youth. The
goal is to foster the kind of community spirit
that, in Page's words, will help to "grow local
farms and local farmers." The planned sched
ule for this year is to be open Saturdays from
8 a.m. to 1 p.m. through Nov. 16.
"I hope the community's going to be excited about it,
and it's going to become a regular thing in Athens to get up
Saturday morning and go to the market and get some good
vegetables," says market board member and new farmer Jay
Payne. He points out also that the local food movement is
really a move back to basics, and that independence from
today's conventional large-scale agribusiness is only natural.
There's an oft-told story in small-farm circles, he says, about a
new sustainable organic farmer talking to an old-timer who's
been farming all his life. The new guy can't get over his excite
ment with the endeavor, and the old guy says simply, "Well, I
guess I'm so old-fashioned I'm ahead of the times."
Ben Emanuel
WHAT: Athens Farmers’ Market Grand Opening
WHERE: Bishop Park
WHEN: Saturday, May 17,8 a.m.-1 p.m.
I )
Photography Exhibit
by lis Carney
Opening Reception:
Saturday May 17 7-9pm
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