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The Logan Square Farmer’s Market is a place unto itself. A strip of sidewalk, macadam, and grass where money becomes fake, and nothing is real. I am, of course, referring to the Chicago Logan Square Farmers’ Market (LSFM) and not the dreaded Philadelphia Logan Square. I neither know nor very much care whether Philadelphia’s Logan Square has a Farmers’ Market. I’m sure it’s very nice there, but it is nothing when compared to the majesty of the Chicago LSFM.
The LSFM is open on Sundays from 9-3pm. A perfectly normal time for a farmer’s market. Vendors sell a wide-variety of locally – read, Michigan and Wisconsin – grown vegetables, fruits, herbs, and other things to eat, that grew in dirt. Pretty much everything is more expensive than what you’ll find in the grocery store, but it’s also usually pretty good quality and you’re not supporting some giant conglomerate. So that’s nice.
The LSFM is not just about vegetables and fruits though. FAR FROM IT. The LSFM vendors offer a smorgasbord of products. A veritable cornucopia of goods. Meats, vegan and non-vegan soap, fried rice balls, tahini, and flowers. You can buy bread, coffee, clothes, and yesterday there was a realtor there. Why? Who knows. It’s the dang LSFM. Anything goes.
People generally have two ideas of farmers’ markets in their heads. Schemas if you want to get fancy. One, probably the most prominent, is of Instagram influencers, often white women but not exclusively, in sundresses, carrying a tote bag full of various lettuces, probably a bundle of swiss chard, and a carrot or two. The caption will probably read “Bliss” or “Heart Eyes Emoji.” The other idea is the sort of large markets you see on cooking/travel shows like Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and the like. These markets, often in various exotic locales, feature stands showing off an incredible variety of wares in large industrial bins. LSFM is neither of these.
The LSFM has a hard time deciding which of those two it wants to be. It has a lot of produce sellers, many of them specializing in similar things, and all of them with industrial bins full of stuff. Also, like a lot of farmers’ markets in major cities, the produce is somewhat secondary to the experience of being at the farmer’s market. The LSFM Instagram is full of all kinds of pictures of all kinds of people at the market, and most of them have one, MAYBE two pieces of produce on them. The new stands in recent years have all been about prepared food – raclette, two coffee places, arancini, tacos, vegan empanadas, to name a few – and not farms. All of them Instagram friendly. While I don’t have exact numbers just from general experience, I’d bet that these places do much better than the stands dedicated to just vegetables and the like.
This is not to say that this is bad. Many of the prepared food places are local and very good! I had a really good Romanian sausage from one of the places and it was killer. Things change, and if what it takes to get people out to the market is a bunch of prepared foods then that’s what it takes. What I’m saying is that there is a third path for the LSFM. A better path.
All of this is sort of building up to what I think really makes a farmers’ market shine. A good farmers’ market is all about the community. Supporting not just local businesses, but the local community. A lot of times we mistake businesses for the entirety of the community. Certainly, local businesses are a part of communities, but they are not the whole story, far from it. While it has problems, as everything does, LSFM does a pretty good job incorporating the whole community. For instance, two weeks ago they were running a “free vegetable for every kid” promo. I think that’s great. There’s also a secondary market that’s sprung up around the LSFM itself. Buskers play just outside, people set up impromptu yard sales in the grass avenues surrounding the market. People just lay in the grass and enjoy the sun, listening to the sounds of the market. Someone was handing out free seeds the other day. People are getting signatures for their local politicians. Someone was even trying to get the Libertarian Party back on the ballot in IL. Seems like a losing proposition, but what do I know. They also donate a lot of leftover produce to various non-profits and food banks.
Of course, the Farmers’ Market could be better at community stuff. It’d be cool to see more stuff about community gardens, lessons on growing your own food, tips on using what urban green space there is to produce food and provide jobs. It’d be cool to see more community outreach to neighborhoods outside of Logan Square, offering reduced prices for low-income people and other types of discounts, or specifically trying to hire people from the community to run the stands. There are a million other things as well, but the LSFM, for being a mostly volunteer-run thing, does a pretty good job. My biggest hope is that they don’t lose that sense of connection to the community. It’s that sense of community that changes the farmer’s market from just a loose collection of stands that pops up every Sunday in the Summer to ruin the grass on the boulevard into something with a potentially transformative power.
Food, as I’ve talked about before, can be a powerful tool of justice. Just look at the recent Amazon Labor Union victory in New York City. Chris Smalls the President of the Union has talked about how cooking for the other Amazon employees was one of the best and quickest ways to get them on their side, or at least to listen. Food brings people together. Anyone who has ever eaten a meal with anyone else knows that. Farmers’ Markets offer a way to do that on a much larger scale. It is certainly not a simple task, it won’t happen overnight and the political goals need to be clear, but it is possible.
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