prepared foods at Chicago’s farmers’ markets
August 2, 2008
The first in non-knitting posts…
Today we walked down to the new-ish famers’ market on 61st St and Dorchester-Blackstone. I am personally really excited about the whole social project going on down there: some local folks heard about the Woodlawn neighborhood’s (just south of Hyde Park, where I live, for those of you who aren’t local) identification as a food desert and decided to take some action and bring the people there something they need: healthy food. What I don’t understand, however, is why I see so many of the same vendors over and over again and various Chicago farmers’ markets, and why prepared foods and non food items (such as handmade soaps) are so prevalent at the smaller markets. For instance, at the 61st St market today there were stands for two different bakeries - the Medici (a local restaurant/bakery on 57th St) and the Bleeding Heart Bakery. First of all, I never buy baked goods at farmers’ markets. I suppose it is probably nearly impossible to find things like organic or decently baked bread in the Woodlawn neighborhood, but this is not what I go to famers’ markets for. But it’s there, fair enough. Bread and pastries and cupcakes and whatnot are just not staples of my diet. Vegetables are. Frankly, I’m just tired of seeing the Bleeding Heart Bakery at every. single. market. in our city. I find the name of the place really unfortunate, and not to mention unappetizing. Perhaps they are nice people, whatever. But I don’t really find baked goods to be soooo totally necessary at EVERY MARKET. But you know, it’s a successful local business, so whatever. I can deal with it. I don’t particularly understand why the Medici needed to be there, however. Out of, say, 10 booths at the market, having two bakeries made about 20% of the market consist of baked goods.
Probably another 30% of the market was taken up by people selling prepared foods and non-food items. There was a booth with jars of salsas, preserves, soups, etc. There were other people selling some hand-made soaps. This leaves about 50% of a pretty small market dedicated to people selling just straight up farm food items - by that I mean fruits, veggies, herbs, eggs, and meats. So what I’m wondering is this - is it hard to get more farmers to come sell their produce at your new market? Are there other, bigger, older markets happening elsewhere in the city, so that it might be hard to attract folks to a small, new market? I’m curious to see how the 61st St market will develop, though, and I’ll definitely keep going - probably on a weekly basis. I just hope my options for fresh produce increase, and I could do without prepared foods and non foods.
***aside #1: Ironically, we had stopped in the Medici bakery on 57th St on the way down to the market, and when my friend inquired politely about her iced latte, which the staff seemed to have forgotten about (she ordered it right after Peter and I ordered ours, so I guess I see where the confusion arose, but then again, both this friend and I have worked in a few coffee shops and it doesn’t seem that strange that more than one person would order an iced latte on a hot day - but human error happens, no biggie) one staff member turned to the other and said, totally audibly, while looking right at my friend, “this girl’s a bitch.” Wow, thanks Medici. Your normally crappy service just got that much crappier. Personally, I didn’t know it could get much worse than constantly forgetting peoples beverages, just never bringing the check, and being generally slow an irritable could get much worse. I guess I forgot that you could just abuse people, too. I just don’t think asking for your drink in a completely polite tone of voice warrants being called a bitch.
***aside #2 that has nothing to do with this farmers’ market - a few years ago I lived in Logan Square, a neighborhood on the northwest side of the city. (Hyde Park is on the south side.) Logan Square’s farmers’ market was in a similar stage of development at that point. There was a girl there selling her hand-made soaps, and my friend (actually, the same one who was called a bitch in the Medici this morning) and I stopped to talk to her. She was really friendly and I needed soap, so I bought a couple goat milk soaps from her. Now, I don’t know what the deal is with these things, but I’m pretty sure they actually were rotting as I was using them. There were dried herbs in them, which was nice, but I would have to rinse a layer of dried herbs off my body before I could get out of the shower every day - that was a little strange. The soaps themselves, however, started to smell like rotting milk after a little while. Then toward the end there I developed a mysteriously wretched BO problem. Finally I realized this was because of the soaps. I’m sure this was a different person selling soaps at the 61st St market this morning, but I still don’t buy them because of this experiment.


















