The "Pop-Up" Farmers Market
Like the perennial flower, which blooms and brightens our lives with vibrant colors and sweet smells, then fades away until the following season...so too does the farmer's market. The Wellness Farmer's market popped up at Rowan University this fall, offered its bounty, then quietly disappeared until next season.
As a class project for Dr. Ferreira's Introduction to Nutrition professions class, Laura heaney-Burcher, Caitlin Laffy and myself chose to bring a farmers market to Rowan University. The collective vision was to provide an accessibility to locally grown and fresh produce and a convenient place to introduce a healthy living lifestyle.
We had so many ideas for vendors at first, we almost drowned in them, the initial brainstorming process was exciting and fast-paced. I almost couldn’t keep up with writing everything down, practically burning a hole through my notebook.
What is a farmers market without supporting local small business owners?....
Narrowing down the list to those we thought the best fit, obviously we had to include a farm, we also wanted options for guests to purchases homemade products, because what is a farmers market without supporting local small business owners? A pretty poorly designed one if you ask me. Lastly, because this project’s main focus was health we also decided to ask some of Rowan’s Health and Exercise Science clubs to participate.
“What a great idea!”
An email was sent out to Dr. Leslie Spencer a Health and Exercise Science professor for assistance in pointing us in the right direction as for how and to whom to contact for each club. “What a great idea!”, she exclaimed in a responding email of our project as well as pointing us in the general direction we needed to head.
Kittens...
Once we notified the clubs about the event, most of them responded with a willingness to participate. This was amazing, progress is being made, I thought to myself, at the time. Oh, man, was I thrilled with every responding email from a club saying “yes”, they’d like to participate, I got excited and want to jump out of my skin. Kind of like, have you ever seen a kitten from a distance that made you feel like you were bubbling up in your chest ready to explode and run over to it just hold it? Yes? Well, that was me, and if not, because you don't like kittens then there is some sort of blackness in your heart...oh sorry, a little off topic, but I mentioned kittens so never really off topic. Anyways, with me the excitement I was feeling made me want to rush faster into the project.
Okay, so, we had our connection to the Health and Exercise Science clubs, now we needed a farm, a location, a date, miscellaneous vendors and we should be good. Ha ha, wow a small amount of progress but still so much to do. Luckily, it came to our attentions that Melissa Hudock, RD for Gourmet Dining, Rowan University’s food service company, was planning on putting together a farmers market of her own and that she already had a farm picked out and a lot of supplies for decoration as well as the experience of setting up events. A meeting was set up to meet with Melissa and Executive Chef John Birmingham of Gourmet Dining.
In the meeting and various other meeting to follow we decided on the farm, Duffield’s, that was interested in participating, a location, a date, time, as well as the idea to having a live demonstration of some sort of healthy food item to be passed out to guests. Chef John allowed me access to his kitchen the day before the event to prepare for the food demo, a roasted beet salad with goat cheese, candied walnuts, and white Balsamic vinaigrette.
...Excitement diverted to sheer panic.
I do need to say that this process was very rushed, Duffield’s Farm agreed to a date that was only 10 days away. Holy cow, 10 days!? Are you serious, we all thought, excitement diverted to sheer panic. Where are the kittens when we need them? As, cool and collected of individuals as we are...extremely exaggerated, we worked hard and fast for 10 days.
By the graces of the farming market gods, we had everything in order our check list looked something like this…
...the big day is here
Faster than we could blink the big day is here! Each of us took a role with the setup and everything fell into place as if we had months to plan and execute. The turnout was more than expected, the farm sold a lot of product, tea was drank and sold as was the coffee, the clubs brought awareness to guest on their missions, and the salad was a hit. I believe we all were satisfied with the end result. Not only were we able to finish our project successfully a huge satisfaction came from knowing, hopefully someone walked away with some extra knowledge how to live a healthier lifestyle.
Thank you!
A thank you would like to be extended to all those who participated in the farmers market and those who had a hand in helping it's success and not in any specific order:
Melissa Hudock, RDN Gourmet Dining
Executive Chef John Birmingham, Gourmet Dining
Production Manager, Chef Stephen Meintel, Gourmet Dining
Dr. Leslie Spencer, Professor, Health Promotion
Duffield’s Farm
The Shop
The Nutrition Care Club
NWI Club
HOPE for Wellness Club
Engrain Coffee
Sarah Outlaw’s Homemade Tea
Laura Heaney-Burcher, Caitlin Laffy and myself, Jeramie Cooper would like to thank all of you for your help and participation!
