The Most Fun You Can Have Buying Food
More farmers market crowds, being berry safe, and mooving right along
Local Food: Hipper Than Ever?
Local food lovers, old and new, continue to throng this season’s farmers markets. There are so many virtuous reasons to go: all that delicious, healthy, sustainably and locally produced food; getting to personally know the farmers who produce it; the huge difference your dollars spent locally make.
But there’s another reason to go. It’s fun.
The photos above of this weekend’s crowds at Chicago’s Green City Market and Wicker Park Farmers Market don’t look like they are performing a chore. They aren’t just buying food. They are enjoying an experience, outdoors, on a late spring weekend that has had unusually beautiful weather for Chicago, even this time of year.
More photos below of some of the stuff they were buying. But first, a plug for my latest story for Buy Fresh Buy Local Illinois — it’s very moooving — and a tip for getting that super-fresh fruit home in perfect condition for which you’ll thank me. Or think I’m nuts.
It’s National Dairy Month on Buy Fresh Buy Local
June was first established as National Dairy Month in 1937, so my monthly contribution to the Buy Fresh Buy Local Illinois site appropriately is about dairy produced by our state’s small local farms.
Just like the produce and meat sold by our state's farmers, local dairy products are the freshest, most delicious and most nutritious you can buy. And you can find them near you in the Buy Fresh Buy Local interactive directory.
The article focuses on Little Brown Cow Dairy in Delavan in west-central Illinois. The farm, owned by the married couple of Terry and Bob Hoerbert, raises Jerseys (the little brown cows in the farm's name), and Terry says they just love the dairy farming life. They had been operating as a commercial dairy for many years, but after a pair of searing family tragedies in 2017, they reassessed what they were doing and converted to a down-scaled sustainable farm with its own processing plant on site.
You'll be both charmed and inspired by their story. And you'll want to buy more local dairy products, of course.
Click the button below to access the article.
Speaking of Dairy…
My friends at Mint Creek Farm (Cabery, Illinois) recently started selling 100 percent grass-fed, organic dairy products from Rocky Road Dairy in Mulberry Grove, Illinois. I first purchased their yogurt last Wednesday at Green City Market and loved it so much that I bought another Saturday. Goes great with those local strawberries that are now in season.
And Speaking of Strawberries…
It is really disappointing to buy beautiful, peak-of-season fruit at your farmers market and then get home, ready to dig in, to realize that some of your treasure got squished along the way. So here’s a little pro tip: When you leave home, grab some hard-sided food storage containers like the ones in the above photo (those round pint and quart deli or takeout containers work fine too).
The fruit you buy at farmers market is picked at the peak of ripeness. It is soft. It is juicy. And it is fragile. The bigger container is my full take of strawberries from Los Rodriguez Farm (Eau Claire, Michigan) that I bought yesterday at The Lincoln Park Farmers Market; the other is from Ellis Family Farms (Benton Harbor, Michigan), purchased at Green City Market. And every berry is perfectly intact.
At first glance this may sound a little excessive. But give it a try. Maybe you’ll thank me.
Market Hauls and Other Photos
My Saturday market visits produced a package of applewood bacon ends and pieces from Jake’s Country Meats (Cassopolis, Michigan), sauerkraut from Bushel and Peck’s (Beloit, Wisconsin), the Rocky Road yogurt purchased at the Mint Creek Farm stand, and those Ellis Family Farms strawberries mentioned above, all bought at Green City Market, and carrots and strawberries from Los Rodriguez Farm (remember to always take and use the greens on root vegetables) and two of the amazing soft pretzels by pHlour Bakery (Chicago).
From my Sunday visit to Wicker Park, Sun Gold cherry tomatoes (sweeter than many cherries) and heirloom hothouse tomatoes from Iron Creek Farm (LaPorte, Indiana), asparagus from Lyons Fruit Market (Fennville, Michigan), regeneratively produced pork chops from Avrom Farm (Ripon, Wisconsin), and white mushrooms from River Valley Ranch (Burlington, Wisconsin).
Lincoln Park Farmers Market
Wicker Park Farmers Markeet
Wicker Park is named for this gentleman, Charles Gustavus Wicker, who lived from 1820 to 1889. An early settler of Chicago, Wicker was serving as a Chicago alderman in 1870 when he and his brother Joel purchased a large tract of land about three miles west of the more heavily developed lakefront with plans to build a subdivision that would surround a four-acre park. Their plan was jump-started the following year by the Great Chicago Fire, which spurred a residential building boom.
Click here to read more about the statue and why Wicker is depicted sweeping a floor with a broom.
Coolio!