Bellevue Market at Party Source

After last week's blog post complaining about Findlay Market raising prices for the farmer shed, I had to visit the place several of the displaced farmers have moved to: the Bellevue Farmer's Market in the parking lot of The Party Source. First off let me say that whoever owns The Party Source is a genius. They have a prime location right across the river from Cincinnati, right at the exit to 471 and they have a well run store with a wide selection at good prices. Every time I visit, they seem extremely busy. Try going there on a holiday weekend, or almost any day in December, and the place is packed.

But the area is bland. The Eat at Joes across the street is ugly, heck everything across the street is ugly, the Justin Scott Memorial Hwy is wide and ugly, and the traffic pattern is becoming more and more congested and unpleasant. Is a place like this a good place for a farmer's market?

Well maybe. It didn't seem so busy, and the farmers all had lots of stuff left to sell at early afternoon. Talking with a couple of them revealed that they had much better sales at Findlay Market. The problem with Findlay they say is that the smaller farmer's could no longer afford $300 to setup at Findlay. Yes, the larger farmer can. For example, Backyard Orchards is setting up at both Findlay Market and Bellevue. He can do this because he has a unique product and lots of it, plus he has a son who can watch the second stand. But the smaller sellers, including Turner Farms and 3 or 4 others have moved to Bellevue. The produce diversity at Findlay Market has suffered as a result IMO.

There were some crafty types selling stuff here too, but the produce selection was pretty good. It just didn't seem like the farmers had enough shoppers.
 

overview of setup
 

Ugly road
 

apples and peaches
 

string beans and garlic measurer at Turner Farm stand
 

squash
 

Corner of Freeport and Campbell

 

This is the corner of two alleys. The wider alley (to the left), Campbell, is actually a twenty-foot wide back street. The other alley is just a one-block long alley named Freeport. I suspect Freeport will disappear someday soon. There once stood on this small block, 16 buildings that included a significant church, maybe a hundred residences and a dozen businesses. Gayle Smith now owns it. He demolished several buildings, and now Findlay Market is doing some raised bed gardening here. This property is on a very visible corner (Elm and Liberty), it will be on the streetcar line and I suppose it could be a major redevelopment spot.

The auditor's map of the area:
 

1703 Elm, last year, now gone and planted with okra:

In this 1996 aerial you can see 7 buildings that are now gone:
 

Wendell Berry, Gene Lodgson and Wes Jackson

I have been getting into listening to more and more podcasts, and I think Citybeat has the best local podcast. This week they have excerpts from the Xavier Food and Agriculture Lecture Series last Sunday, which featured a discussion between Wendell Berry, Gene Lodgson and Wes Jackson. Below is a quote I transcribed:

Well I wanted to go back to this issue of limiting growth. We talk about limiting growth as if somebody is going to figure out how to limit it, as if somebody external to the problem would come in and measure it and say "alright, this far and no farther". There are lots of reasons to worry about that as you know.

So I think if we are going to talk about living as creatures rather than machines, you know all the voices all around are telling you that you are a machine, ... if we're going to try to live as creatures we ought to try to think our way back into our creaturely life and talk about what pleases us.

And one of the first things you realize if you begin to think of the human creature as a person who seeks to be pleased, is that most people are deeply displeased... by their work, by their places and so on...

"Thank God it's Friday" is virtually a national motto. But, people that are doing the thing they are called to do the work that they are best fitted to do in this world, and attracted to aren't saying "thank God it's Friday". They're having trouble distinguishing between their work and their recreation. Work itself is pleasure giving.

One thing the three of us have in common is that we live in really attractive places. And that's not at all to say that these places in which we live are extravagant in any way. We don't live in palaces. We live in places that in one way or another have relation to the surrounding landscape. And in the relationship between the dwelling place and the landscape and the other creatures with whom the dwelling place is shared there is a kind of comeliness that is deeply pleasing and deeply satisfying.

Now I'll just talk a little now from experience. I'm speaking as an experienced odd person.

If you live in a pleasing place, a place that you really like to be in, you're not going to need television, or violent distractions. Your not going to spend your time speeding somewhere. You're have to want to spend your leisurely time at home, (which would be a great saving in fossil fuels and lead and these other things that we're against). If you like looking at the country you are in, your not going to need to look at television. My own phobia or motto is to stay away from screens. I avoid screens of all kinds.... screens of distraction ...that disguise the place that you are. Books don't do that. -Wendell Berry

Urban Farming Program

Urban Farm Program Seeks Urban Farmers

Ready to make that career transition and jump into work you love? Are you a great gardener seeking to make your avocation your vocation? Or, maybe you are farming in the hinterlands of metro Cincinnati (or beyond) and want to establish market production plots just blocks from Findlay Market. Or, perhaps you have friends, family, neighbors, church members, or others who you know would be great urban farmers if only they had the land and the opportunity. The key variable is the willingness to earn significant income through the long hours and hard work of commercial vegetable production farming. This will be long-term, ongoing work.
Findlay Market seeks both apprentice and experienced farmers. We will train apprentice farmers (having less than two years experience) and support skilled farmers (at least two years growing and commercial selling of produce, dairy, or meats). Working together, we will take vacant lots and develop them into lush, green, productive, and income producing farm plots. Farmers will be responsible for all aspects of growing food in the urban core: clearing ground; preparing raised beds; tilling; adding organic soil amendments; irrigating; and planting, cultivating and harvesting vegetables. Participants will write business plans; plan their plots; market and sell their harvest; keep expense and incomes records; analyze and evaluate all aspects of their work; and strive to make a living.
Interested in applying? Know someone who needs to apply? Contact Urban Farm Manager Ken Stern at the Corporation for Findlay Market, 513-665-4839, x14 or kstern at findlaymarket dot org. Interviews will be in February and chosen participants will jump into planning their 2010 farm plots in March.

Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson and Gene Lodgson

This is a few months away, but think it is pretty significant to get these 3 guys together in one place:

Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson and Gene Logsdon
Sunday, April 11, 2010, 7:00 pm
“An Informal Conversation”
Co-sponsored by the UC's President's Advisory Council on Environment and Sustainability and the Brueggeman Center for Dialogue

Wendell Berry is a Kentucky farmer and writer, described by the New York Review of Books as “perhaps the great moral essayist of our day.” He is the author of more than forty novels, anthologies of essays, and books of poetry that use his intimate knowledge of his Kentucky River farm home as the starting point for eloquent and penetrating critiques of the modern agricultural system and its consequences for communities, families, and politics. Wes Jackson is the President and co-founder of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, a research and demonstration center dedicated to developing polyculture perennial grains as an alternative to our current annual grain monocultures. Gene Logsdon farms in northern Ohio and has written numerous books and magazine articles on the subject of small farms, rural living, cottage farming, homesteading, alternative farming practices, organic gardening, composting, aquaculture, and other types of alternative agriculture.

All lectures are held in the Cintas Center and are free and open to the public.

Food Inc

A new documentary: Food Inc will be shown this Thursday, 4:30 at UC. I would really like to see this:

Written by authors Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) & Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), the film illuminates & exposes the food production system relative to corporate monopolies, government support and health & environmental risks. It alternates charming & frank slaughterhouse imagery to address issues ranging from factory farming, genetically modified crops, increased diabetes, illegal immigrant worker exploitation, e-Coli outbreaks, corn subsidies to reduce meat & fast-food prices & relationship between food corporations & Fed regulators. Presented by the Center for Environmental Genetics.

Free. After the screening, a discussion will be led by a panel that will include UC faculty with expertise in toxicology, industrial hygiene, nutrition, obesity & advocates for local foods & fighting food-borne illness. The film was produced by the team who made An Inconvenient Truth and Charlie Wilson’s War. 94 minutes.

In Kresge Auditorium, Medical Science Building, University of Cincinnati Medical Campus, 231 Albert Sabin Way @ Eden Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45267. Contact info: koprasej at uc dot edu.

A trailer
More movie info