“From a Farmer,” 2006.
After Sally and I moved to Cleveland Heights, some friends led us down the hill into East Cleveland to visit a farmers market. Driving there, as we passed through sadly neglected neighborhoods, we had our doubts. But when we walked into the Coit Road Farmers Market we were excited to find a haven for local food sources. Going to this market week after week ever since, we received our education in buying and eating local.
I am thankful that farm markets are again the cool thing, and I hope the message is getting through that we need to get our food from local sources. Supporting our farmers through a neighborhood market is the best way to go. I have been donating my services to the Coit Market since 2006, documenting their events, the people and the food.
I am donating the above photo as a raffle item at their first-ever benefit event, “A Taste of Autumn 2009,” being held this Monday night at the Beachland Ballroom. If anyone is looking for a fun way to spend an evening for a good cause, I would recommend buying a ticket.
Featuring several local chefs who will prepare dishes from locally acquired food, the evening will be MC’d by Fred Griffith, a local food guy in his own right. There will be raffles, special guests and awards and old time music by the Coit Road Ramblers, a eclectic group of musicians that have been fiddling around at the market for a while now.
In operation since 1932, the Coit Road Farmers Market has never strayed from its mission: bringing exclusively locally-farmed food to people in the city. Farmers have been delivering their apples, corn, melons and tomatoes to the corner of Coit and Woodworth for 77 years, all the while watching America shift away from their closest source of fresh food: the farms that surround their communities.
The Coit Market, which stays open all year round, serves a community that is struggling to pull itself up by its bootstraps. Being the first farmers market in Northeast Ohio that offers their farmers the ability to sell their products to food stamp recipients, Coit Market has greatly increased farmers’ outreach to people who find it hard to find fresh, healthy and nutritious food.
They have a very cool community garden on their property, and also leases plots to urban farmers who sell their bounty at the market’s stands. Market manager Kevin Scheuring (AKA The Spice Hound) and I have a plot of hops growing, and have an experimental plot of winter wheat going in the ground this weekend—sounds like the makings for a nice Hefeweizen!
Please consider attending the benefit. It would be a great way to spice up a cold October evening. All of the great things at the Coit Market that are giving the community hope are dependent on the generosity of volunteers and donations. To order tickets, click here or visit the Coit Market’s by clicking this link. And come on down to the market while the harvest is still in!