Local and tasty getting easier all the time

Columbia Farmers Market is adding locations. Some details provided in comments by Eric Reuter:

I just heard from the market manager on the double-church question. Forum Christian Church will be the southern market location this year (opening this Thursday), while Rock Bridge Christian Church is intended as the indoor winter market location. Hope that clears up the question.

Emphasis mine. The Ashland market on Thursdays is pretty paltry (though the bbq is pretty good), so I may have to stop off at Forum Christian Church tomorrow evening.

Columbia Farmers Market – winter hours

Now this is impressive news.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Columbia, Missouri – November 17, 2009

Due to rising demand from both customers and vendors, the Columbia
Farmers Market will be extending its season on a trial basis through
December 19th.

Stimulating news for Columbia

My latest column in the Columbia Daily Tribune. For the record, it has been completely hacked to pieces (not by Marcia, but during production) and is a mess on the Trib site and in the paper. Here it is as originally written.

The Columbia Farmers Market has really gotten around over the years; six moves to five different locations by my count. They’ve moved so often customers could have been forgiven if they stopped showing up. But they haven’t. In fact, more people showed up last year than ever before: up to 5,000 customers on a good day.

An unexpected boost for the market pavilion?

From out of the blue, the ten-year old effort to to construct a year-round structure for the Columbia Farmers Market could be getting a boost to the finish line:

Casey Corbin, executive director of Sustainable Farms and Communities, said he worked with the new chairwoman of the group’s steering committee, Judy Baker, to get the State Department of Agriculture to submit a request for $2.5 million of the federal stimulus package to build a pavilion on land leased from the city near the Activity & Recreation Center.

CFM profiles

A day in the life of one market vendor, Danjo Farms.

Beating the farmers market blues

My column in the Columbia Daily Tribune today:

Sunken, distant gaze. Grumbling stomach. Aimless fridge-staring. It sounds like it could be an emerging eating disorder? But no, it’s the farmers market blues; and I’ve got them bad.

For the last eight months, my counters, pantries and refrigerators have groaned under the weight of fresh local meats, vegetables and eggs. Buying local helped keep our neighbors in business and us well-stocked with flavorful, healthy food. And then suddenly, cruelly, the tents were packed up and the vendors dispersed, not to be seen again until late March. What’s a guy to do?

Another step for the Farmer’s Market Pavilion

The Columbia Farmer’s Market Pavilion effort was publicly unveiled in July. When completed, the project will offer mid-Missouri a permanent, year-round structure for housing the farmer’s market, as well as the potential for other uses.

Bruschetta festival needs volunteers

The local outpost of the Slow Food movement is going to be holding a bruschetta festival at the Columbia Farmer’s Market in a couple of weeks. They need volunteers and I can’t think of a better way to spend a late-summer’s morning than chopping fresh tomatoes and grilling crusty bread (I hope they use Uprise Bakery‘s inimitable batard).

Here’s more info:

Columbia’s Next Big Thing

Anyone who has lived in a city with a covered farmer’s market facility knows how important they are to a community. I saw this firsthand at Washington, D.C.’s Eastern Market, where permanent booths sold cheese, fish, meat and vegetables. On Sundays the grounds outside the south hall were crawling with merchants selling art, crafts and anything else you could imagine. It was lively, fun and a boon to the community.

In Florence there stands (correct me if I’m wrong) the finest of all examples of this, the Mercato Centrale, pictured above. Some in Columbia are fixing to replicate this phenomenon on the grounds of the Columbia Farmer’s Market. It’s called the Farmers Market Pavilion, and the big kickoff is Saturday, July 26th. Fundraising is under way, but when finished the pavilion will offer

a resource available to the entire community. Built through a public/private partnership, it will continue to house the Columbia Farmers Market and be programmed by Columbia Parks & Recreation whenever the market is not in session.

Off Days On at the Farmer’s Market

Between soccer practice and family commitments there’s a good three week stretch where we’ll be absent from the Farmer’s Market on Saturdays this month. But vendors are starting to show up on Mondays and Wednesdays now. As of last week the selection was limited to Walk About Acres and their very tasty ice cream. But yesterday brought two produce vendors. The selection is still depressingly limited to spinach and lettuce (damn you cold spring!), but it should be picking up over the next few weeks. Can’t wait for some real choices; I’m about spinached out.