SUMMER 2010
Volume 10 / No. 3

Market Fresh
More restaurants and shoppers are discovering the sweet taste of locally-grown produce
by Constance E. Richards

You throw on your comfy shoes, a touch of sunscreen, and a big hat and grab a canvas bag. It’s Saturday morning and the tailgate markets are open for business

Farmers from across the region have backed up their trucks and lowered tailgates. With everything from heirloom tomatoes and petalsoft lettuces, squash, okra, eggplant, peppers, and beans to homemade pasta, jams, goat cheese, sprays of wildflowers and beyond, the market stalls are brimming

Mingling aromas of fresh baked bread, sticky buns, bunches of rosemary and mint, a whiff of briny ocean breeze of seafood in coolers—all are visceral reminders that the foods we eat come from the labor of human beings—our neighbors, our friends

While a visit to the market won’t necessarily supplant a regular grocery store schedule, it’s a welcome change from over-bright fluorescentlit aisles and glossily packaged goods. And for the area’s farmers, it is the best possible way to meet their customers

Saturday mornings start off somewhat differently for the growers—some waking at 4 a.m

or earlier to travel to their designated market, stack their produce presentably on tables and turn a brisk business

TOWN SQUARE
For many consumers like Missy Reed, a working mother of two, the farmers’ sacrifices allow a return to a ritual that starts in April and lasts until the frigid days of late October. There’s fresh, fragrant produce and the opportunity to chat with those who coax the first shoots from the earth and cultivate them into gleaming bunches of greens laid out on market tables

Listen to a tune or two, chat with friends

It’s something Reed looks forward to all week

In many ways the market is the old town square resurrected

“I love the sense of community and the good feeling that comes from purchasing items that are grown and raised and made locally,” said Reed, a life-long western North Carolina resident

“There’s a sense of ‘oneness’ that comes from supporting each other. I imagine how people who once lived in small villages felt.” Reed, who lives in Asheville, has a tradition of dropping by the City Market in downtown Asheville, then making her way to the North Asheville Tailgate Market. The former is a tourist-friendly market with musicians plucking away at banjos and ukuleles, coffee carts with aromatic espresso beverages, stalls proffering fresh-baked muffins and scones, flower and herb sellers, and jewelry designers displaying their wares among the farm vendors. It is indeed an urban market at its best, a fun and fruitful stop for folks with out-of-town visitors and local residents, even a great place to go with a date

Reed’s second stop, the North Asheville Tailgate Market is more suburban in flavor. Set up under a canopy of trees in a parking lot at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, farmers greet regulars where the pace slows a bit

Neighbors confer over the best way to plant basil at the herb stall

While only 20 percent of her grocery shopping takes place at fresh markets, Reed is hoping to increase that percentage this year now that her children are older and willing to try more foods. Bread, fresh greens, fresh goat cheese, honey, apple butter, herbs, tomato plants, body care products, and sweets are some of her favorite buys

“It feels natural and solid to shop this way,” she said. “I love that there are no product placements, sales pitches or the question ‘paper or plastic.’” GROWING MARKET A survey of the Asheville City Market on the day it opened this past April showed 190 new customers who had never been to a tailgate market in the region, according to Rose McLarney, marketing director for the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project

“That’s a pretty good number,” she noted

“And that was just from the people who bothered to come over to the booth and sign up. Farmers’ markets are becoming more popular every year

Buncombe County (where Asheville, N.C is located) is now home to a dozen markets

There’s at least one in every county in western North Carolina. The 2010 Local Food Guide published by the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project lists close to 80 markets in western North Carolina, east Tennessee and north Georgia, as well as more than 400 farms and community gardens in those areas

“The growth in popularity is likely due to the increased value people are placing on local food, thanks to the local food movement,” McClarney explained. “Farmers markets are becoming more numerous, more diverse and better known

Every county can support its own.”

Additionally, she said, a diversity of community members are becoming aware of markets, ranging from people concerned with health and sustainability to traditional, conventional farmers, to gourmet foodies, to food stamp users

“It seems like most everyone understands the reason to buy local now,” McLarney said

In 2007, the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project released a groundbreaking study on the potential for local food in western North Carolina. The study noted that every year since 2004, consumer spending at local farmers’ markets has increased by 15 percent

FIELD TO TABLE
As important as the occasional Saturday shopper is, local restaurants and caterers fill out the rest of the farmers’ dance card. Last August, when Nate Allen and his wife Wendy Gardner first opened Knife and Fork, their Spruce Pine, N.C., restaurant, they made it a point to visit the small farms in their immediate area to meet the growers in person

After a decade in Los Angeles, the couple returned to their native mountains to live the sustainable life and open their own venue based on those principles. Doing that meant utilizing the produce from farmers down the road

“I, just in general, love farmers,” said Allen. “They’ve given their entire life to grow the things that allow me to practice my art

It’s a direct farmer-to-chef relationship that gets to exist here.” In opening the restaurant, Allen inspected all the farmers’ facilities. “The ones that show me around the farm and are passionate about the practices they use are the most reliable partners for me,” says the chef

And while he doesn’t require certified organic growing practices (which command a high price and a rigorous testing procedure by the government), he does want to ensure that the farmers treat their animals humanely and grow their product as naturally as possible

Allen has also made it easier on local farmers

Being one of the only restaurants in Spruce Pine and one with a daily-changing menu, Knife and Fork has become a big-time client and farm advocate for nearby farmers. Yet, even with all the deliveries with which farmers have accommodated, he still relishes a day at the market

“I love going to Burnsville’s tailgate market,” he said. “It’s everything from serious career farms moving a great deal of product to smaller hobby or subsistence farmers sharing their excess, sometimes little old ladies selling jams. It’s neat to see the products from people whose families have been here for generations.” Of course, Allen tends to visit at 7 a.m. as people are setting up. He’ll help the farmers unfold their tables so he can get to the produce as fast as he can. The result of such care is evident in the charming restaurant overlooking Spruce Pine’s lower road railroad tracks. A chalkboard boasts the menu of the day that bears witness to the fresh intake from the morning—juicy tomatoes, tender beet and root vegetable au gratin, and crisp greens atop a French country-style pate made of rabbit from a Yancey County farm

Rabbit pate? Marketplace lattes? Spiced blueberry vinegar or homemade pasta vendors? Dare it be said that farming has somehow turned ... fashionable? Karen Bowman might agree, and thinks that’s fine. She sold produce at the Watauga County Farmer’s Market since 1993 and has been its manager since 2005. She’s observed a patent increase in young farming families as venders. She’s also witnessed a swell in the Saturday morning shoppers, counting among their numbers second homeowners and tourists, as well as seasoned regulars

“We call this Boone’s ‘Town Hall,’” said Bowman, as she wandered from stall to stall, making sure signs were prominently displayed with some 90 vendors every weekend. “We also call it a BLT market…where you can find all the ingredients here to make a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.” This has been the most popular period for farming since the inception of this market in 1974, Bowman added

“I’d go as a social event, but it didn’t do a lot to sustain farms,” she said. “It’s definitely doubled in vendor participation. It attracts both large-scale and small-scale farmers, and we pretty much have the volume all morning.” Some 2,000 attendees have been known to make it through on a Saturday

CROPS AND COLLEGES
College and universities teaching farming practices have noted an uptick in applications and more interest in sustainable agriculture and variations thereof as a subject concentration

Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., boasts an 18-year-old sustainable development program. Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, N.C., has its own profitable farm as part of the sustainable agriculture concentration under the environmental studies major

As part of a much-touted work-study program, all Warren Wilson students work 15 hours a week on various crews around the pastoral campus, including the work intensive farm crew. Made up of mostly students studying that particular curriculum, they often work many more hours to accomplish farm tasks that don’t fit into given time blocks

In fact, Warren Wilson started as the Asheville Farm School in 1894 to educate rural Appalachian youth

“They farmed and grew their own food and that tradition has continued for over a century,” said Chase Hubbard, Warren Wilson’s farm school manager

Additionally, as “seed savers” Firefly Farm actually harvests many of the seeds of the produce, thereby keeping every part of the harvest local, and not needing to go to national sources of seed catalogs

“The chefs are gracious with this and let us cut them open and removed the seeds,” he said of the candyroasters

The farm also saves tomato seeds and peppers

THE NOUVEAU FARM
In Madison County on about 160 acres of rolling hills, Three Graces Dairy raises goats and cows to produce farmstead cheese. In an involved process that Sacha Alford and her mother Roberta Ferguson mainly taught themselves with occasional tutoring from a cheese expert, they prepare dusky camemberts, pungent abbey-style cheeses, and feta, as well as soft goat cheeses they mix with ginger or herbs

A tailgate market favorite (they sell their cheeses at three a week) is the “Date with a Nutty Canadian,” made of organic pure maples syrup, dates, black walnuts

These former Chicagoans represent yet another breed of farmer—not the old timer, not the younger generation returning to the homestead, but the second career, first-time farmer

With her husband Steve and a young toddler, Sacha Alford followed her mother to the farming life. For Roberta Ferguson, this was supposed to represent retirement

Early feeding of the young kid goats (sometimes just birthed overnight), mucking stalls, milking the mature goats—all that has to happen before stepping foot into the sterilized cheese kitchen. Yet the effort seems to be worth it, according to the family

These fancy cheeses involve hard work and making something by hand that can’t be denied

“Our farm is a small-scale, multi-tasking environment,” Alford explained. “We employ local people who share their knowledge of the community with us and their wisdom in all things land and animal.” Two young interns from the county help feed and milk the goats, while mother and daughter develop their cheeses in a sterile kitchen. They offer tours of the farm several times a month

“It’s important to let people see where their product comes from,” said Alford, noting that when embarking on their adventure, observing was key. “Our whole adventure into farming was years of reading books and dreaming and hoping and just throwing ourselves into the fray.” Whatever their motives may be—seeking tradition or a new endeavor—today’s farmers are allowing a growing number of people to share in the bounty of fresh, local produce that’s readily available and ripe for local economies.