I stopped by the farm stand at the Ellie Towne Flowing Wells Community Center a few weeks back and found Audra Christophel educating people on how they can include more locally grown vegetables in their meal plans. It was impressive.
One of the barriers between people and farmers’ market vegetables is so simple it’s often overlooked: How do you use what they sell there? That’s where Christophel, the consignment coordinator for the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, comes in. She can explain it better than me, so I won’t get into it here. But you should visit her sometime.
The veggies are really, really good, too, and they come from either a food bank farm or people’s backyards. I bought enough squash and garlic and other things to make dinner for about $5. And it was all grown locally, so that $5 goes to local people, not some company bigwig smoking fat cigars in some distant boardroom.
The farm stand at the Ellie Towne Flowing Wells Community Center is there from 9 a.m. to noon, the first and third Friday of each month. Hey, that’s this Friday! Good times.
This article appears in Jul 28 – Aug 3, 2011.
Perhaps Adam Borowitz can nudge Jimmy “that’s really uncool, Red Star” Boegle to make “Best Farmer’s Markets” a category in TW’s “Best of Tucson, 2011.” Or perhaps not–these enterprises don’t seem to advertise in local media unlike the “Best Cupcake Shop” last year in TW.
In any case, there’s a story. Good job so far.
Best Farmers’ Market was a Best of Tucson category last year, and is indeed back this year. Way ahead of you, that’s-uncool dude.
Again, props to TW’s Adam Borowitz for getting something, anything, some kind of ongoing coverage of the Old Pueblo’s efforts at local gardening and local marketing rather than waiting around a year for “Best of Tucson, 2011.”
Uncooly and dudely,
Red Star