I am writing from my living room for this week’s online Sentinel. Looking around on the coffee table, I noticed four small jars from our market vendor Beehunter’s Jams & Jellies. My son sits next to me eating a snack from a bowl I picked up 3+ years back during one of our market’s Empty Bowl campaigns, and the zucchini bread in the bowl is made with local veggies and pecans. Surrounding me are the little things that shopping (OK, and working) at a farmers market has provided for me. There are rain boots I bought for those April-shower-type market days placed in my shoe collection. Crafts my kiddos made at Kids Gardening Club are on a bookshelf. 

I am sitting here, considering what to write and just gazing about my living space. I am hit with how wonderful our market is, and what I support by being a member of it.

It’s a community, and one which works for the good. You see, the Empty Bowl campaign was supported by a beautiful woman named Linda Stewart. One year she made so much blackberry cobbler that we sold a serving plus a clay bowl for $10. Each purchase paid for one family’s week of participation in the USDA’s Women and Infant Children program at the market. 

If you don’t already know, we have been privately fundraising for five years to enhance the WIC program at the market. My first spring with the market, we offered each household active in WIC $10 a week for grocery shopping at Webb City Farmers Market. It was successful for a couple of months until funding was diminished. 

We’ve been able to continue the program off and on and in the past year we haven’t had to pause the distribution of coupons. That’s been possible because of support from donors and fundraising. 

There are other states that fund programs like ours. We are waiting to see if Missouri follows suit. Until that day, we will continue asking for donations and conducting fundraising events such as the Empty Bowl. That was a pretty good fundraiser, maybe we should do it again. What do you think?

It’s exciting. The more public offices see the benefit to people shopping locally for groceries, the more farming will become a way to support the life you want again. During 2020, farmers markets were allowed to stay open just the same as grocery stores and supported this area with fresh vegetables and meats when the stores were out. Local food systems are essential, last year proved it.

My son has noticed I am typing the column. He’s been reading it aloud while I type in a newscaster voice… He is still reading it as we go…

Okay, I’m back. I couldn’t type because I was laughing too hard. I told him to go back to reading his book so I could finish writing, and his giggle-tainted response was, “And then I can be your grammarly.” He’s hysterical. (People who work from home with family running around, let me hear a shout-out.)

Like I was explaining, my life is filled with evidence of a thriving farmers market and it’s here because I show up. I shop. I appreciate it. The jelly that used to fill the jars on my coffee table, those preservative-free sweet flavors, have been in my kids’ school lunches this semester. This market is something its patrons cherish and value. We love meeting new customers who tell us they just moved to the area. Their smiles are big when they explain they are thankful to find a farmers market that is so well stocked. At the end of last month I met a beautiful family who were happy to share that they’d just bought a bit of land and were new to the area. They plan to grow food and learn the joys of homesteading here in our neck of the woods. I’ve spotted them each week since. They are part of the movement of people who are all making a habit of shopping local. We, as a market, are excited to have an active and bountiful market to offer.