Sustainability. Do you know what this word means? It’s a word that unravels into a concept that is becoming a necessary interest to many people around the world. It’s complex but a word that I and the current Board of Directors have at the forefront of our future plans.

Sustainability can be as small as an individual’s lifestyle supporting things like recycling, eating locally sourced foods or carpooling. Sustainability can also expand into the bigger picture where cities value green energy or public transportation. 

No matter how big or how small the effort, if you put it all together we can have a priceless impact on future generations. I mean, we all 100% have an impact so why not mindfully set out toward a positive one.

I was astonished at how much of the market’s waste was cardboard when I started working here back in 2018. Thanks to the inquisitiveness of a board member, we were able to add a cardboard recycling bin at our corner of the park. Thanks, Galen! This was only the beginning.

Last year, we made a huge effort to substantially use more locally sourced food for our free summer kid’s meals. And this year, that effort trickled into the Cooking for a Cause breakfast. 

There have been challenges, but there always are when change occurs. The first obvious challenge is that local produce costs more than commercially produced food from a box store, and because of that we couldn’t afford to waste food.

For example, we’ve had to quickly figure out on a large scale the best ways to keep local fruit from spoiling. You see local food hasn’t been sprayed with gallons of preservatives and fungicides. If we wished to harvest, say, strawberries, how could we ensure they’d still be of use to us three weeks from then. This particular challenge led to the development of the market’s berry sauces. Our genius kids’ meal chef would serve a freshly harvested fruit once and then make a sauce to freeze with the excess. We would then return to that sauce when needed for yogurt parfaits. 

Another thing we stumbled over was how to keep fresh shredded potatoes from browning, like apples, so that a casserole presents the same coloring folks are comfortable eating when they are used to the look of chemically processed foods. Alas, we are still working on that one.

The more tedious challenge laid before our market’s sustainability effort is finding ways to raise funding without reliance on outside sources. 

My mentor, Eileen, was a goddess when it came to grants. She could sniff out money, write up the most masterful concepts, and then mobilize resources to get what she envisioned. 

Grants are primarily used to provide training or tools for farmers, marketing materials for the farmers market, or to educate the public about local foods. Her talent even helped establish a commercial kitchen here in Webb City. 

Grants are not great for providing things like property maintenance, paving, or year-round employees. 

My explanation is a roundabout way of telling you about my vision for a sustainable movement at WCFM.

What I lack in legal writing, I excel in understanding people and food. So I’ve started a push toward utilizing the market’s commercial kitchen in a way that will directly benefit the market, our farming friends, and customers. 

We started back in April producing a fresh batch of granola to sell each week, featuring local honey and in-season locally grown fruits.

I want to recognize when there are excesses of a particular produce item and then research a way to preserve that food, turning it into a valuable product – again, a sustainable concept. 

We are cutting waste and increasing the value of quality foods from our farms for our shopping families, while dropping a few coins in the market’s pocket. 

The market granola has become a staple item, and we are gearing up to explore new products that no vendors offer.