Starting On Sunday
Introducing Our Farmers Market Info Bank
Local Food Forum’s Evolution Continues
Thursday, July 1 is the three-month anniversary of the official launch of Local Food Forum, and it is time to make an important adjustment to our content flow.
From the beginning I have promised that our readers will have comprehensive farmers market schedules so they know when they can attend farmers markets in their neighborhood and beyond and support our local farmers. We will continue to do so.
But — as you can see below with just the Chicago city and inner suburbs listing —there are huge numbers of markets just within the metro area. And these listings are virtually consuming three full days of issues each week, boxing out other valuable content on the wide range of issues we seek to cover. Most regular readers have seen this material multiple times.
In order to balance these priorities, I am creating Local Food Forum’s Farmers Market Info Bank, which will be your place for farmers market schedules as other info. Substack, the publishing platform for this newsletter, enables writers to create sub-newsletters within their newsletter site, and Farmer Market Info Bank will be the first for us.
Subscribers need to do nothing to obtain access to Farmers Market Info Bank — you will be automatically enrolled. When I post schedule information in the sub-newsletter, you will receive it by email. And I will continue to list each day’s farmers markets in the issues of the primary newsletter.
Creating Local Food Forum’s Farmers Market Info Bank will also enable us to provide more detailed information about the region’s farmers markets outside the Chicago metro area, which is of too much volume to include in the primary newsletter.
I believe this is a viable solution to ensure that Local Food Forum has maximum relevance and minimal redundancy. If you have any questions or concerns (or if you think it’s a great idea), please contact me at bob@localfoodforum.com.
Flower Growers Are Farmers Too
Local Food Forum greatly appreciates the support of Mark Dolnick, who writes the excellent Friends of the Evanston Farmers Market newsletter. And we are grateful that he shares the beautiful videos of market products that he creates.
His latest, featured here, highlight the flowers that are featured along with food at our farmers markets. Flower growers are farmers too, and the beauty they bring into our lives and homes nourish our souls.
A note from Mark:
If you visit farmers markets for food, it's easy to forget that flowers and plants were the other original thing for sale at farmers markets back before the bigger markets evolved into county fairs (sans rides, of course). That was me, until I had a chance to visit the Evanston Farmers Market with my daughter, who loves plants and arrangements and such. I took in that market with her eyes, and grabbed some photos that I compiled in this little film, shared courtesy of the Friends of Evanston Farmers Markets.