Mapping 2023

One thing I do each December is to think about my work year, what I wished I had accomplished and what I might do in the next year. I am sure this list is no surprise to any of the hardworking market operators and market partners that I wish I had done more for in 2022, but in these exhausting years of the COVID crisis, there has been a growing and mostly unmet need to offer organizational services such as grant writing assistance, board development and governance audits, staff Human Resources support, and product development for market vendors.

In 2023, I am determined to redouble my efforts to increase support for farmers market operators through more directed technical assistance and resource collection and creation, both in my staff role at Farmers Market Coalition and in my small role in my own time working as a consultant directly with markets across the US and with the newly emerging World Farmers Markets Coalition.

Here are some of my 2023 goals:

Continue connecting climate activists and funders to community food leaders so our work can be named, outlined, and funded in the climate mitigation work happening across the US and globe. This includes seeking funding for a disaster recovery toolkit for farmers markets;

Pick up new skills and tools including completing a course on mapping networks which I believe is an excellent tool for market leaders to know exactly where they need to deploy their limited resources for maximum effect;

I also have carried around a longer term goal to start too seek funding for an FM Anthology book; once secured, asking writers and activists to contribute pieces on the vision and history of the modern market movement that illustrate how it has contributed so much to localized health and wealth initiatives in thousands of places across the globe;

Working more on a regional effort here in New Orleans named the Pontchartrain Network to increase connections across the dozen or so Louisiana parishes and MS counties that rely on the lake watershed. That work will focus on educational efforts to all civic leaders about how to achieve increased production and consumption of food grown in the region;

At FMC, we will be seeking a new Executive Director in 2023, as Ben Feldman plans to step down after a successful run the last 3 + years (although I certainly hope he will remain as our policy person);

I expect to help the authors of the Anti Racist Farmers Market Toolkit with their goal of implementation of its strategies in markets by helping them secure funding for that work. If we get those efforts well underway, we can begin to seek leaders in the indigenous community to add their own content towards similar strategies so the modern market system can also be a more useful tool for tribal nations that are prioritizing culturally meaningful production and healthy options for their residents; to that same end, our work with USDA supporting a pilot of 1890 land-grant universities to add farmers markets to their campuses has already taught our team a great deal about how to help their efforts and we would hope to add more sites and 1994 land-grant universities and Hispanic-serving universities in future rounds of that work;

We will also be working on the new Regional Food Business Centers that USDA has added as a new level of support to regional food systems, and expecting to play a large role in the work with farmers markets across all of the centers;

Our food access team will seek to expand its funding to assist market organizations and states that are branching out past GusNIP funding for permanent incentive and benefit program support, as well as continue to support the large pool of GusNIP grantees whose work often becomes the realpolitik for food access decisions at USDA.

And with my decades of work on finding appropriate and relevant evaluation systems for community food system leaders to use (rather than funder or academic versions of what they think evaluation should mean), we will continue to create and support software and analog tools to conduct low-intensity evaluation of the many many impacts that markets have on their community, and in helping those with data turn them into infographics and analysis they can use to increase funding and awareness.

One other priority will remain: the development of FMC into serving a permanent role as the dynamic, stable, and effective go-to entity for the estimated 9,000 market communities in the US, as well as supporting our partners in similar sectors such as CSAs, farm stands, agritourism, and community gardening to be able to do the same. I am happy to report that that internal work is being ably managed by our Deputy Director Willa Sheikh and enthusiastically aided by our entire stellar FMC team which I am deeply proud to work alongside. Learn more about them here: https://farmersmarketcoalition.org/joinus/team/

So that’s my plan. I’d love to hear some of your plans around farmers market work and maybe even build a support network for those of us who do this work. If so, leave a comment.

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Kuni: Building regional communities that are right-sized, connect rural and urban, and measurable

Over the weekend, I cracked open the eagerly awaited/just published “Kuni: A Japanese Vision and Practice for Urban-Rural Connection” authored by Tsuyoshi Sekihara and Richard McCarthy.

Sekihara is the founder and leader of the Japanese RMO (Regional Management Organization) Kamiechigo Yamagata Fan Club. This entity is tasked with creating kuni (community) in an estimated 25 villages in rural Japan, making its home in Nakanomota.

McCarthy is the founder of the regional organization Market Umbrella in New Orleans LA, and (while he and I worked there) had set its region as “Gator Alley” or “Gumbo Nation” along the Gulf Coast. In true U.S. fashion, neither description of our region was precise (or as Richard rightly describes it, “light and loose” versus Sekihara’s “grounded” region) but they came pretty close:

Food Regions of the US (Nabhan et al)

Mirror Images of Each Other

In its opening pages, McCarthy describes the opportune meeting with Sekihara that came via outside funders and leaders bringing he and others to Japan, and where the two recognized their common vision which can now be shared via this framework.

Yet kuni is not just another term for local or revitalization but is meant to create something that new.

Be compact but contain all of the elements needed for human life

Have the right scale

Balance between bridging and bonding activities

Choose pluralism over tribalism

Be close to nature

or as beautifully said in there: “To trade on assets adored by outsiders but curated by locals.”

Sekihara’s RMO is tasked with creating kuni’s preconditions and is partially funded by overseeing government projects as well as creating products that can be exported (although the raw materials must originate from within the RMO.) There are other RMOs in Japan, but none with the depth of the KYFC. (It may also be helpful to share that “fan clubs” are common in Japanese society for all types of organizations including corporations, many with their own mascots.)

By having McCarthy as the co-author, the application of Sekihara’s ideas can be shared through the hundreds of communities that McCarthy has worked or visited via his work with Market Umbrella, Slow Food US, Slow Food International, as president of the new World Farmers Market Coalition, or his own current global Think Like Pirates firm.

You’ll find the steps that Sekihara took to his own “J-Turn” to KYFC with descriptions of the conditions he found as well as the challenges, including the shocking level of disrepair, the challenge that he calls “the Beast,” and the many gatekeepers/dictators he encountered and their power hoarding — all of which any organizer should be able to recognize in their own communities and possibly even within their own organization.

The book is rich with lists of lessons and examples for any organizer including the brilliant Rice Covenant (which is more complex than you’d think), place polygamy, the concepts of equilibrium, circularity, and spirals, the 2 Loops theory, Richard’s pirate ship framework, examples of kuni-style organizing from around the world, and (a personal favorite of mine), explanations from both leaders as to why holding onto single proxies such as “local” or relying on national or global certifications can be entirely too limiting.

It is available everywhere with a U.S. tour by McCarthy imminent (email him through his site which is linked above) if you think you can create an event with him) to invite these visionary ideas into your work.

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Kuni can help our markets

I am always scouring for new books that may help our markets to advance their system change work. One major lesson I work to keep in my front mind is how best to assist market operators in prioritizing working as networks rather than “silos.”

I have written on this subject, some of which can be found by searching in this blog under “networks”; for now, this is a good example : https://darlenewolnik.com/2021/12/20/local-resiliency-shouldnt-be-the-goal/

In many of those posts, I consider the effect of climate chaos and civil unrest on the still-fragile, but always-energetic pop up farmers market sector, and suggest that the success rate of reducing organizer and producer burnout and increasing engagement is almost entirely dependent on thinking regionally, or as you will hear later, territorially.

The idea of regionalism may seem already knit into the community food movement, but I see plenty of examples of food leaders misinterpreting true regionalism. One example is how few urban farmers market managers and volunteers visit their rural and exurban vendor farms regularly. Or, how few community food leaders speak up for regional planning issues which directly impact their farmers and other producers. And I talk to plenty of rural farmers market operators who bypass the replicable operational lessons that their urban sistren and brethren market operators have to share, or mistakenly feel they don’t need to focus on justice work.

And long before 2022, all organizers were struggling with the rapidly unfolding and difficult work of assessing and mitigating disruptions, either because they thought only hyper-locally or, didn’t define their region as expansively as it needs. For example, in 2005 when the federal levees broke after Hurricane Katrina ravaged LA and MS, my organization Market Umbrella struggled to find enough partners to rebuild our region – but not because we had not thought regionally previously, but because the region we HAD developed was entirely in the same situation. In other words, we had established a bioregion for our farmers markets (even going as far as defining our allowable vendor range as anywhere in the “American Alligator region” which spanned multiple states as the climate and agricultural products were shared with New Orleans) but in terms of truly creating organizational and community resilience, we would have benefited from deeper relationships north and west – and not just south and east – and in other sectors such as housing and transportation. (We also struggled because few other entities were able to work regionally which is part of what disaster exacerbates and why you have to have that approach before the bad day comes.) So I now know only so well that political, cultural, and even historic trade regions are as vital for food organizers to know for their own work. And while ensuring that racial justice is front and center in our work, simply ignoring those outside of our “blue” or “red” area will not serve our shared goals very well.

In terms of offering a global framework, the FAO report titled “Mapping of territorial markets; methodology and guidelines for participatory data collection” was recently recommended to me. The report essentially defines what the US calls “local” or “producer-only” markets (of course, neither of which are entirely precise) as territorial markets. From the report:
The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) defined these ‘embedded markets’ as ‘territorial markets’ (CFS, 2016a), characterized by the following criteria:
◗ They are directly linked to local, national and/or regional food systems (the vast majority of products, producers, retailers and consumers are from the given territory).
◗ They are more characterized than other markets by horizontal (i.e. non-hierarchical) relations among the various stakeholders.
◗ They are inclusive and diverse in terms of stakeholders and products.
◗ They have multiple economic, social, cultural and ecological functions within their respective territory, and are thus not limited to food supply.

◗They are the most remunerative for smallholder farmers (as compared to other kinds of market), as they offer the farmers greater bargaining power over prices.
◗ They contribute to structuring the territorial economy, creating wealth and redistributing it within the territory.
◗ They can be formal, informal or a hybrid of the two.
◗ They can be located at different levels within territories (local, national and cross-border).

What is especially instructive to me about this description is the work we have in front of us in the U.S. to ensure our farmer markets measure up to this and to other categorizations and our policy partners understand it too.

All of this chat about networks leads to a recommendation for a model encapsulated in a new book due out in October:

Kuni: A Japanese Vision and Practice for Urban-Rural Reconnection

In the book, Tsuyoshi Sekihara and Richard McCarthy take turns with descriptions and illustrations of what reimagining of the rural-urban relationship might look like and what results it could offer. Sekihara is the founder of the Kamiechigo Yamazato Fan Club, a community development organization focused on the holistic revival of Japan’s rural areas, while Richard was the founder and the longtime director of the U.S. based regional farmers market organization, Market Umbrella that I mentioned above.

“Kuni” is both a reimagining of the Japanese word for nation and an approach to reviving communities. It shows what happens when dedicated people band together and invest their hearts, minds, and souls back into a community, modeling a new way of living that actually works. A kuni can be created anywhere–even a hamlet on the verge of extinction–and embodies 7 key principles:

Everyone is equal in a kuni
Kuni is equipped with a regional management organization–a democratic organization that takes care of small public services
Kuni is a link between residents and repeat visitors
Life in a kuni is circular–consumption and production are in balance
Kuni embraces the whole person

I’ll add a bit of Wendell Berry here with how he suggested communities should also think through the appropriate scale for human centered regionalism:

“We must not outdistance local knowledge and affection, or the capacities of local persons to pay attention to details, to the “minute particulars” only by which, William Blake thought, we can do good to one another.”

Much of what Kuni (and Berry) are lifting up, we are seeing in some extraordinary US farmers markets and food work, most often led by Black, persons of color, and indigenous leaders. No surprise to me that what white-led and designed organizations are trying to figure out in the current work to become active anti-racist allies, our sisters and brothers knew already.

Chiefly among that is to eschew linear, hierarchal, purely capitalistic roles and structures for those that value the entire human, have a democratic center, and prioritize balance and inclusion. Once a community embraces that, the sky is the limit in terms of impact and organizational health. That will be the reward for listening to leaders who came to this work with system change as their goal and to those who are leading us with care and intention: that the food community thrives by establishing regional connections, valuing human-centered innovation and the realization of our shared future.

PreOrder Kuni: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781623177317

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Disaster planning and markets

I assume my readers have correctly surmised that I live in the hurricane zone of New Orleans and that as a result, am always interested in talking with operators about and looking for ways to prepare for the inevitable interruption. How markets help in the recovery and rebuilding of current disasters and what we develop as a resistance to future disasters is something for which we can all prepare ourselves. Disasters that U.S. markets have had to handle just this half decade include damage to persons, home and food production because of climate chaos, infrastructure collapse, civil unrest, mass shootings, police actions, pandemic shutdowns and I’m sure there are more types that I forgot to cover.

As a New Orleans resident and as a part-time US market consultant, I am always thinking about how I can help my own area and others too.

At FMC too we think a lot about it, since we provide support to markets (through grants and contracts) by:

a) facilitating technical assistance or networking with peers or building communities of practice to solve an issue;

b) the development or dissemination of resources;

c) offering analysis of the sector, of programs or directly to a market;

d) assisting or leading in the development of low or high tech suitable for market operational needs.

…- so check in with me if you have ideas about how FMC can do that around disaster recovery. Here is some of what we have gathered and created so far. And we are also excited to be a founding member of the World Farmers Markets Coalition where we expect to learn much to bring back to US markets on this subject and others.

On their own, most market organizations will not be able to organize themselves out of a disaster because the long effort over many phases requires prior informal and formal relationships with local and regional governments, and some resources that are held outside of the impact zone. So the goal should be to have updated regional databases of farmers, value-added producers, production areas, agricultural experts, justice allies (cuz disaster is quite often a time when privilege and racist policies are the structure used to offer support and to restore communities), templates, data about the market sector around the disaster area, and the right connections already made with government entities and activists in and around the food system.

One reason that those local and regional governments will search for your organization after a disaster will be because of those databases and the shared lessons from other market communities you have but for it to be helpful to those entities, your preparation will need to be more than just about your market community. So organizing now around civic and agricultural partnerships- even if done lightly for now – will allow a faster recovery by keeping you at the table and in the loop. And when farmers and others see your ability to respond to a moment, you could even grow your market once recovery is over.

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local resiliency shouldn’t be the goal

At the end of this second year of the COVID era, I’ve been thinking a great deal about the thousands of market leaders, tens of thousands of producers, and the hundreds of thousands of our neighbors who have continued to prioritize regional food in their lives even during this horrific pandemic.

I think we had hoped that we had passed the biggest test of the COVID crisis, but it is possible that we may have a bigger one: to find the fortitude to safely withstand the succession of its outbreaks over the next few months and possibly even years while still attempting to grow the number and diversity of those able to purchase healthy food for their families. And to do that even as other shocks (climate chaos, the pitched battle over white supremacy, crumbling infrastructure) hit our communities at the same time.

People often call this being resilient.

Resilience is the ability to adapt to difficult situations. That seems straightforward, but many communities have pointed out that very adaptation can become the only action or the status quo, allowing government to rely on that resiliency rather than attempting to solve the underlying issues. Depending on the crisis or series of crises, it can be depleted and once gone, can mean catastrophe for a community by allowing outside actors to become the only arbiters of what happens during recovery.

-from the site Edge Effects:

Resiliency-based planning, however, has been opposed by grassroots organizations and activists. In 2015 in response to the City of New Orleans’s resilience strategy, posters started appearing throughout New Orleans quoting Tracie Washington of the Louisiana Justice Institute. “Stop calling me resilient,” the posters read, “Because every time you say, ‘Oh, they’re resilient,’ that means you can do something else to me. I am not resilient.” As (it) makes clear, instead of simply addressing the cause of environmental degradation such as land loss, Louisiana has apparently accepted the inevitability of this degradation–and is learning how to cope.

We should acknowledge and credit resiliency but insist on creating more participatory and dynamic solutions, focusing funding and efforts to those that are contextual to that place and its scope.

In terms of being contextual to that place, writer Jane Jacobs suggested that one of municipalities’ main activities be (I’m paraphrasing her here) actively replacing imported goods and ideas with regional goods and home-grown creativity whenever possible. To do what Jacobs suggested requires participatory structures and illustrative pilots for government to draw from. That ability to test multiple solutions at the community level would be one strategy that food system leaders can use in outlining as to why our work is so important to municipalities’ plans.

And whenever we talk about scale in food systems, the discussion often settles into a set of camps including (a) those who think the goal is to scale up food production to meet industrial food’s demands and (b) those who firmly believe that food is itself an antidote to scaling up, and (c/d) those who want to keep industrial food functioning and participating in local food production even as they work on alternatives and so on. The development of multiple systems may be best explained in the 2 Loops Theory of the Berkana Institute which I have written about previously that describes those roles to be played.

Also, whenever scale comes up, I think of this from Wendell Berry:

It is a formidable paradox that in order to achieve the sort of limitlessness we have begun to call sustainability, whether in human life or the other life of the ecosphere, strict limits must be observed. Enduring structures of household and family life, or the life of the community or the life of the country, cannot be formed except within limits. We must not outdistance local knowledge and affection, or the capacities of local persons to pay attention to details, to the “minute particulars” only by which, William Blake thought, we can do good to one another.

Within limits, we can think of rightness of scale. When the scale is right, we can imagine completeness of form.”

In other words, scale itself needn’t be the enemy; rightness of scale allows us to still pay attention to details, to measure how we do good to one another.

How do we find that rightness of scale?

Writer Ihnji Jon outlined a scale of political action that can serve either ever-expanding (globalized) or ever-narrowing (localized) as long as they are:

1) “subject to territorial conditions”,

2)”posses a degree of intensity that allows it to be influential across different systems”,

3) “are large enough to retain complexity that allows them to have interaction effects”

So as we think about farmers markets and community food systems, the right scale would keep the food system leaders able to pressure government to deal with the underlying issues, would encourage funding for localized active, inclusive democratic networks, would support communities to rebuild as slowly or quickly as they need and use local leadership in doing so, and most importantly would democratize all of the resources needed to create the new adapted normal. That would mean resiliency would be properly supported by functioning systems and would measure its spread as an opportunity to make real changes in that place, rather than celebrating it as a solution.

That could mean radically changing the emergency food system to reduce the bureaucracy of getting support when needed and increasing actual mutual aid, it could mean working to become the true center of inclusive civic spaces, it could mean engaging with the educational system to link regional food to childhood health, it could mean that regional climate initiatives become focused on food production and in championing the stewardship of local people…

All of that is possible, even if it is not yet probable. I hope to begin to outline examples of systemic thinking and scaled planning among farmers markets and their regional food system efforts on this site in 2022. Please share those you know about in the comments.

and lastly, I hope each of you takes some time the rest of this year to replenish your own reserves. Please do consider how you can engage with your community in ways that reduce the need for the reservoir of your resiliency to be emptied in each crisis and that increase your joy in the lovely way each of you does good to others in farmers market spaces.

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How festivals are doing it

This post below is from one of my favorite writers in New Orleans. He talks music and analyzes venues – especially festivals – like no one else in town. Obviously I am posting it here because I think this is helpful for market organizers, learning how others are communicating the changes that are necessary for managing event spaces during a pandemic. The links below lead directly to the communication put out by these two entities.

in the spring, I started tracking how festivals talk to their fans and people invested in their events. I thought BUKU Music + Art Project did a great job, talking to their audience as peers and fellow music lovers, communicating with enough candor to make fans feel connected to the event. Others – you can fill in the blanks – kept it remote, saying as little as possible, as if every extra syllable was a state secret.

Another model for doing it right just arrived from Fe stival International de Louisiane, who gave us a rundown of how 2020 went, the challenges they’re facing for 2021 – starting with the challenge of booking international acts – and called for input with a few basic ideas such as keeping downtown Lafayette involved as fixed points. Festivals live on the strength of their connection to their fans, and that kind of openness goes such a long way to keep it solid. Will anyone locally learn from it?

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Hitching your market’s wagon to a star

“Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labour, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day and cost us nothing”

Emerson wrote those words in his American Civilization anti-slavery essay in 1856 for The Atlantic exhorting his fellow citizens to see how they could link their own beliefs to the forces around them, thereby maximizing their own impact and also reducing their own load. By often stressing the idea that one is not free until all are free (“where the position of the white woman is injuriously affected by the outlawry of the black woman”, “Let every man say then to himself—the cause of the Indian, it is mine; the cause of the slave, it is mine.”) he was illuminating how we can travel together through “the vehicle of ideas, “borrowing their “omnipotence.”

This has been on my mind a great deal lately. Partly because the exhaustion and stress in market managers’ voices are even more palpable this year than previous ones, and also because big issues are lighting up the sky all around our markets. On the first, know that I (and many others) worry about you and your vendors, and hope you find ways to de-stress after market day, and still find momentary joy in the work. My organization, Farmers Market Coalition is working daily to find ways to add support for operators and to amplify your work. Please do root around on the site and join us for our webinars and check out our new emerging Communities of Practice.

This post is attempting to respond to the second, meaning those big issues we are seeing around us. But keep that first in mind: people are pulling for you, do see you, do know the tension and self-doubt that come along with that market map and bell…

If you have read this blog, you know that I believe the best way to make the market operator position work over the long term is (a) by making the “invisible” work more visible to the market’s stakeholders and (b) by reducing as many of the operational silos that exist and that keep the one or two-person market operation in a constant state of crisis and burnout. I think the one thing we cannot do – assuming this pandemic has a complete endpoint – is to count on “fully normal” returning. It is what so many of us who managed markets through a disaster learned at some point: that some of the changes that seem temporary are in fact permanent, that more change is still coming and not all of it will be welcome.

“Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor and promote,—justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility.” – Emerson

In terms of the activities happening in North America in the last few years on our public streets and squares, market operators can happily accomplish so much more by following Emerson’s advice. Because by adding those outcomes to the market’s long term goals, we can hitch up with other fellow organizers and even lean on their skills and energy and leadership.

Black Lives Matter. Climate Change. Immigration Reform are some of the issues that can be easily brought into market work. And even though those issues can inflame some of your community members who have yet to consider how they can be an agent of positive change on them, those issues also inspire countless others. When markets embrace these ideas as their goals, it tells your community that this market is interested in the overall quality of life for its entire community, and plans to be around for a while, striving to do more and do it better. There is no better way to increase your stakeholders than by sending that type of message.

That has been the promise around the mechanism of markets from 1970 on: to be an engine for system change for our producers, for our visitors, and for our neighbors. The histories of the earliest back-to-land markets make it clear it was never about adding back the old-style public markets. Those had often stopped being useful for their local farmers long before, and the limitation of the daily sales metrics as the only measure meant those outlets were easily replaced by newer forms of the same type of extractive capitalism that championed the middleman and centralized distribution even more successfully than public markets in order to “reduce inefficiencies”. (Don’t get me started on “efficiency” as a b.s. measurement for food. Its come up lately and so this link is one I use often to urge my peers to read about one idea on how to move away from it. )

In contrast, the lofty goals of the more recent farmers market movement indicate that big outcomes are our promise, presented via different structures and values. If we agree that is so, then justice and equity for all have surely always been part of it. It just needs a wider set of stakeholders and the right set of specific system goals to make it happen.

We have moved the dial for some short-term outcomes, such as altering the narrative around local, building the lexicon around sustainable farming, encouraging sophisticated placemaking strategies, and even slightly increasing food access through our work. We are allowed to be proud of what we have done so far, especially if we also acknowledge that we have not yet met our systemic goals. That’s okay- no one expected us to do it all in one generation, or two, or even three.

I am reminded of the story an organizer told me about a small Asian country that had committed to becoming completely free of violence – but wait for it – in 1000 years. That deadline frees the activist from their ego, and also reminds them that each step to that goal is worthy. Or you can use the oft-repeated Chinese proverb: the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago; the second best? today.

Same idea: we do not have to DO EVERYTHING today; we just need to start.

When we become better allies by naming and challenging the racism built into every part of the dominant industrial food system, it is easier to explain why we feel the need to offer an alternative that rests on new power structures and why it will take a lot of concerted strategies and iterations to create this new version. Organizers today can start with piloting equitable market and land access, introducing educational materials that work for a diverse set of leaders, (made by a diverse set of leaders, centering those BIPOC voices still unheard in most food system work) about the potential in expanding civic engagement via direct relationships, and maybe also find some time to measure success, ie. wealth in new ways. And by listening.

Recently a colleague suggested to me that reparations could begin with some market organizers using their application system to allow in new BIPOC – led farms without fees, (or through offering in-kind marketing support, or through free or reduced costs for training as many NGOs like NOFA-VT are offering BIPOC farmers.) I was stunned at the elegance of that one idea, of how contextual and agile it is. It shows how a small group can engage with a huge issue and still get positive impacts that matter today.

Another example is that markets can easily begin to shift the power dynamic that exists in the market rules around land ownership to more strongly encourage cooperative farming.

In both cases not only does the market become better allies to the BIPOC movement that has embraced innovative farming practices and alternative collaborative ownership models, but they add vendors who have new skills, experience and resiliency.

Climate change is pretty easy to see as an issue for markets, but yet few embrace it at the system level (Got give a shout out to aptly-named Post-Oil Solutions in Brattleboro VT which manages the winter market). We are right ON IT when the fires come and farmers are forced to move their livestock hundreds of miles overnight, or entire bee colonies are burned out, or markets need to set up closer to the need to get the new disaster SNAP dollars flowing, but where are we when our cities and regions are negotiating climate agreements? What about energy policy? And clearly, this is one arena where young activists have taken center stage, so it might be time to invite that local teenaged climate change activist into the advisory group.

And immigration reform is a shockingly absent topic in the food sector, even though newly arrived residents are overwhelmingly the people who hold the dominant system together. And let’s be clear: our alternative food system often utilizes that same farmworker structure, sometimes with very little transparency or equity in terms of profit-sharing or benefits. Markets are the outlet that every resident arriving from other places recognizes and yet few have found their way into them as vendors, much less as shoppers or as organizers. We have to challenge ourselves to understand why that is so and linking to the work being done on this issue is a good first step. And by listening.

In any case, I expect a bunch of you are shouting at me from your nook, “yeah those are great ideas, but HOW CAN I DO THAT AND ALSO GET THE DOZEN YARD SIGNS UP AND CALL ALL OF MY VENDORS AND COUNT TOKENS…”

Well the answer is you can’t.

Another story: a pal was telling me once about her partner who had no desire for children but, being from a large Italian family, seemed to miss the large group dynamic when they sat to make family decisions. My pal said to me humorously, “I feel like I need to get her a baseball team to come and sit in our household chats. She needs the give and take that I just cannot offer on my own!”

That is also what a market manager needs: a team. And I don’t want to hear how hard it is to manage that team either: if you want to manage a market well, get better at handing work off. It’s a non-negotiable of a successful market. Adding informal advisory groups so that your circle of leaders is wider and more inclusive is one way to do just that. As a market leader, I devised a handout postcard that invited people to join us at the next 2 monthly meetings for whatever project I was thinking that person in front of me could be helpful on. I had them in my market bag to scribble the name of the project and the time and date of the meeting on to hand over, and also had a few with stamps affixed to address and send out. Those informal advisory groups met as needed, offered unvarnished advice as they saw fit, and were not tied to any long term commitment. I was also under no formal mandate to take all of the advice I was given, but I got a lot of help that I did take. And for those of you in small places without a lot of people around, the modern world of connectivity being more available allows this to be done through online platforms.

In other words, not only will the work that you do be more fun and less taxing if you find the right star to hitch to, but it will reduce the sidelining of markets and alternative food systems as precious or as elitist. During COVID-19, the difficulty in getting markets deemed as essential or allowing all types of market vendors to vend in many states (even though other outlets were not held to the same constraints) shows how directly markets would be aided by having these system-level support systems.

I’ll leave you with Emerson’s conclusion that speaks directly to the excellent work each of your communities is engaged in:

“…when I see how much each virtuous and gifted person, whom all men consider, lives affectionately with scores of excellent people who are not known far from home, and perhaps with great reason reckons these people his superiors in virtue and in the symmetry and force of their qualities,—I see what cubic values America has, and in these a better certificate of civilization than great cities or enormous wealth.”

Update

This Food X Design podcast from @IDEO explains why the food system is inequitable by design, why language matters, and how agency is key to creating new food systems that work for BIPOC. #FoodByDesign was created by @scodraro and @sandiddy.
https://page.ideo.com/food-podcast-8

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Pirate ships, untie.

Some of you may have heard the news earlier this year that Slow Food USA’s Executive Director Richard McCarthy was stepping down from his command after six years. Of course anyone who reads this blog knows he was the founding visionary and 18-year E.D. at Market Umbrella* which is the NGO that manages the Crescent City Farmers Markets in New Orleans, and where I was lucky enough to work as Deputy Director and then as Marketshare Director for a decade. I had departed its solidity and dynamic programs in 2011, feeling as if I needed to use the skills and resources I had gained to build the field of markets across the US and to focus on Farmers Market Coalition’s development, an entity that Richard had raised the initial private funding for and had served as the first board president when it became its own 501 (c) organization. He very graciously allowed me to take most of the materials we had developed at MU to grow my consulting business (Helping Public Markets Grow) and to use it later on as the basis of my current work as part-time staff at Farmers Market Coalition.

Since his move to NYC in 2012, we have kept in regular contact. I had even attended both of the Slow Food Nations events in Denver that happened under his leadership, partly to see if there could be an alignment between the work I did with FMC and with SF, but also to experience some of the synthesis he was famous for orchestrating between NGO leaders and chefs, private foundations and practioners, savvy media types and farmers, and a slew of others who share the theory of change that put farmers and markets in the democratic center of food systems. He always introduced me with the description that I know he had carefully crafted for me: “Darlene is a market guru and my colleague from the New Orleans days of running markets…” Like much of his wordsmithing, it was carefully open-ended and charmingly odd.

Whenever we met up, it was very much as if we were back in the cramped offices of Market Umbrella, discussing both the minute details of the work to put on a market, and the systemic trends and changes we noted and those we hoped to see. I often told him that I wished he would STOP running non-profits, and start to write, speak, and work at a different level on behalf of the entire system of organizers in the food and civic systems.

Now he is happily unmoored from his tether, roaming the world looking for places to put his efforts in the coming years. My goal is getting him visiting the port of farmers markets regularly, and so I am doing my best to get him to work on a farmers market anthology with me, with part of the proceeds benefiting FMC and other worthy orgs. Maybe that will happen, but in the meantime, he is beginning to use the blog format to share his thoughts and to raise his flag.

The blog is called think like pirates, and I can offer a tiny glimmer as to why it is called that, although Richard has developed this idea in new ways since its unveiling. But here is the beginning:

Some years back, I watched a Charlie Rose episode with Tori Amos and found this resonant:

Charlie: Now, this tour with Alanis Morrissette, tell me about her. Do you like her? Do you admire her? Is she good?

Tori: She’s a lovely person, good heart. She’s good at what she does.

Charlie: That’s it?

Tori: That’s good!

Charlie: I mean… well, was there conflict, was there tension? Or was it just a lovefest?

Tori: No tension because… I think honestly, she approached me and she did it in a way that was like, “Hey, lets be creative and put two shows together, two separate shows and um… I had to bring my own production. I didn’t want to do anything where I couldn’t bring my own production because that’s not how I work. I have a pirate ship, I have a captain…

Charlie: Yes.

Tori: I’m the ship. (giggle)

Charlie: Yes.

Tori: I have loads of chefs.

Charlie: Yes.

Tori: And all sorts of people floating around. Thieves, fantastic. A few harlots.

Charlie: Yes.

Tori: All on my ship.

Charlie: Yes.

Tori: And we all had to come and be respected that, you know, no compromise on any level. and, she has her captain, she is her ship, and of course that’s how it had to be approached. And, because of that mutual respect it worked out really well.

I went to the MU office the next day and told Richard about this interview. He immediately connected to it to our work, and came up with his pirate ship anthology for markets. (It is my memory that he had long been obsessed with pirates and maybe that’s why I told him. I believe he already flew a pirate ship flag on the front of his house.)

He began to say in presentations that we have to work as pirate ships, with our own flag, shanties and crew, but mooring together when needed. One day we even came up with a button that said, “Sail Alone, Anchor Together”; I still have one and wear it to market events where it is universally understood.

So I am pleased to introduce my readers to my pal’s new blog. His writing is practical, literate and metaphorical, and will encourage you to ponder it later on that day or week. Maybe over grog on your yardarm…

Market Umbrella was previously organized as ECOnomics Institute, and was a project of the Twomey Center for Peace Through Justice at Loyola University from 1994-2008.

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Farmers and Culinarians: You Got This

Anyone who reads this blog knows that for the past 20 years I have been especially passionate about two subjects: my neighbors on the Gulf Coast and the people and work of organizing around healthy and just food systems. Since becoming a national consultant and a staff person for Farmers Market Coalition, I have continually sought ways to combine the regional and national work I am involved in with my support of local initiatives, both in food and other civic projects.

One opportunity has presented itself through a visionary neighbor of mine, Bethany Bultman. Bethany and her husband Johann are activists who founded the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic in 1998 and subsequently the New Orleans Musicians’ Assistance Foundation in 2005. Bethany is always enthusiastic about connecting people and ideas and expanding the good in New Orleans.

Recently, Bethany introduced me to their You Got This program, “a compassionate, inclusive performing arts mental health outreach program designed expressly for our creative community, including music, dance and art students, to help calm suicidal thoughts, feelings and plans by promoting optimal mental health self-care. The community at large is also encouraged to help through support and intervention.

As Bethany says so eloquently, “people who move through life with a calling often blame themselves for any failure in that calling and isolate even further.” When she strongly suggested that this program be extended to local farmers and other food community leaders, I was thrilled that she had brought this to me.

Prioritizing self-care and community intervention through engaging events and resources fits so perfectly with the work that we do in farmers markets that I was on board immediately. There is no question that the issue of wellness, both physical and mental, needs to be our top priority. The numbers for all Americans in all walks of life in terms of their wellness are frightening. Added to that, farmers and harvesters and their workers are at the top of the list of the most dangerous jobs in U.S. Farm Aid has a great many resources and papers on the issues that reflect the often harsh reality of the farming life. Since 1985, they have also had a toll-free line 1-800-FARM-AID, to provide a listening ear and resources to farmers in crisis. And at the SSAWG conference happening this week, workshops like this are being offered:

Self Care Practices for Farmers — The truth is, being a farmer means you are constantly giving your energy with little time to recharge and recenter. It’s hard to find time for yourself, which can lead to a downward spiral of burnout, depression and even death. The more responsibilities you have, the more essential it is that you take care of yourself. Learn how three farmers implement self-care in their work, how to identify your emotional needs and communication style, and walk away with a few key tools that you can implement into your daily farm routine in just 10 minutes a day. Marlena Nip, Edible Schoolyard New Orleans (LA), Felicia Bell, RD & S Farm (MS), and Mark Cain, Dripping Springs Garden

Watching the very real and lovely way that You Got This offers places for the local creative community to seek help or even for the larger community to receive training to see the signs of depression or addiction among their culture bearers, I can easily see how we can add food producers to this.

So look for the beta version of Farmers and Culinarians: You Got This to begin in New Orleans. The good news is that we already have happy and well places to engage with our producers to offer an ear, resources and support: farmers markets, and the local farm delivery hubs popping up around town. In addition, many of the chefs and store owners who truly value local artistry and who care for these producers and see them regularly are also interested in being a place for this to begin.

Within Farmers and Culinarians: You Got This, I fully expect to revive one special activity from our fair trade/handmade holiday market (Festivus) that ran from 2003-2007 next to our Crescent City Farmers Market: our “Office of Homeland Serenity” which was designed to offer some respite and care, offered even before the regional horror show that began in August 2005. After the levee breaks, the OHS was even more special and useful at Festivus. I still get comments from locals about it and how they loved the set of activities and fun we added to each day.

I’ll keep you updated and please let me know about your local initiatives that are designed to build support for your producers and to extend the health and wellness offerings at farmers markets to even more neighbors.

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2019 for farmers markets

As usual, I’d like to offer my thoughts as to what may be in store for farmers market organizers and producers in the coming year (as I did in past years: 2018, 2017…)

With the end of year passage of the Farm Bill (coming as a welcome surprise after watching the summer-long legislative shenanigans in the House), the organizing for direct marketing for 2019 is now slightly altered -as soon as the government opens up again that is! The inclusion of LAMP in the farm bill offers markets some stability for grant funding over the next 5 years and also means a better-to-great chance of FMLFPP funding being included in future farm bills. Two other changes may be significant for farmers markets: the requirement of a 25% match for FMPP proposals (it had only been required for LFPP proposals previously), and the language to “support partnerships to plan or develop regional food systems” which is funded at 5 million per year. The FMPP match requirement seems to indicate that the grants will be prioritized for those who build deep partnerships into their proposals, and seems to be born out by the added 5 million for partnership work. Getting this funding could put market organizations in leadership roles in regional policy work, especially in terms of vendor needs (more in a minute on this), disaster response planning, and climate change initiatives with municipalities- that is if the grant language (when written by AMS) directs this funding to individual markets. If it turns out that the funding is really directed more to your state and network associations, I would expect them to use it to build capacity for their markets, especially in the area of increased data collection capabilities and dynamic data-driven analysis. That would align with my 2017 mantras for markets:

Don’t Hide the Hard Work
Function like a Network Whenever Possible

Two other areas that I expect to be active among markets in the coming year and beyond is in verification of local claims and in product development initiatives. The first has been climbing the ladder of priorities since the explosion of meal kit box programs, grocery store fragmentation, and the use of “local” in marketing language by every kind of player in intermediate channels (i.e. specialty stores, restaurants.) Farmers Market Coalition has even begun to discuss this regularly in house and included this topic in the farmers market track of 2018’s inaugural Direct Marketing Ag Summit. It was ably covered in a presentation by Washington State Farmers Market Association’s Colleen Donovan whose work on market integrity is well known, and by Boulder County Farmers Market CEO Brian Coppom who is fast becoming a great national spokesperson for farmers markets on the subject. FMC also added to the conversation around brand integrity in 2018 by taking over the management of the Buy Fresh Buy Local brand.

There is much to do on local verification and protection of the brand, but my sense is the best way for markets and other local food authorities like BFBL leaders to own it is (1) going through a process to find out the community definition of local/regional that works best there, and (2) transparent verification systems that explain/illustrate geographic proximity and proper stewardship of land and water. Once those are accomplished, state legislative language protecting it may be helpful.

The product development work is a little less visible, but is happening among some innovators. I’ve had recent conversations about this work with Grow NYC and a few others and expect to hear more, especially with the increased use of Metrics by markets to collect data. That data collection has been a game changer for market organizations as the necessity of collecting data from their vendors has sometimes turned out to be a point of contention. That tension is usually because those markets have never systematically collected market day data or used longitudinal data as the basis for market day decisions, relying entirely on management levels or outside funding priorities to decide when to add vendors or market days or even when doing event planning!

In the past few years of pilots with markets, the Metrics team (which includes me of course!) has advocated that the best way to make the need for collection understandable to ones vendors is to openly and simply share market level data which can then be compared privately with their own business and product- level data, allowing for more complete business intelligence for those entrepreneurs. Building this type of partnership with vendors also levels the field, as data becomes the lingua franca of market day decision-making rather than those decisions being (or seeming to be) made willy-nilly or behind closed doors without vendors input. The more market leaders think about, research, and support development and marketing of biodiverse items at their markets, the more they will understand their vendors businesses and consumer preferences and will be able to build partnerships and find funding to add products that data shows will do well at that market. All of that will quell much of the pushback on data collection-over time.

Throughout this post, the one word I have used again and again is the one that I hope sticks with markets: partnerships. These need to be more foundational (meaning include those partners in how the market itself is managed not just about the shared program), more dynamic (check in regularly to see if they are working and why), and be more diverse (hopefully self-explanatory). These partnerships, if designed well, will absolutely reduce the wear and tear on market staff and minimize turnover and burnout.

If every market reading this post set a goal to add two more (*non-traditional) partners to their program development planning, and started to consider their vendors as partners, I think 2019 would be a banner year in farmers market development.

*non-traditional: meaning partnerships beyond those who have shared outcomes in terms of direct marketing agriculture or increasing use of federal benefit programs for healthy food (although the latter were non-traditional partners not so long ago). This could include immigration services agencies who could help with vendor and shopper development, agencies working on public transportation amenities who could help with adding walking, biking, bus-riding people to markets, social justice organizations working on civic engagement, real-estate professionals who are in contact with new residents and could direct them to their local market, and so on.

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Louisiana Update #9: A post-flood visit with a market farmer

Spent Wednesday morning tagging along with Copper Alvarez on her BREADA Small Farm Fund site visit to Lucy Capdeboscq’s home and farm near Amite. Copper has been crisscrossing the state seeing farmers who are reporting losses from this month’s floods. It’s important to note that BREADA is not focused only on their market farmers needs, but doing their best to get funds to any market farmer across the state. Although one of Lucy’s daughters had been one of Red Stick market vendors in the past, Lucy sells only at the Saturday Crescent City Farmers Markets down in New Orleans. As a result, she was surprised when Copper contacted her by phone, asked if she had damage and then offered an evaluation visit in case BREADA’s fund might be able to help.

Of course, no decisions or promises are made during the visits about any support, but as Lucy commented, the contact and visit were very welcome. Crescent City Farmers Market is also reactivating their Crescent Fund and has already had Lucy fill out their short form to receive assistance. The Crescent Fund is hoping to raise enough money to handle the 8 or so CCFM market farmers who have indicated losses, by quickly offering up to $1,500 for their farm needs.

To get to Lucy’s place, one turns off the main road at the permanent sign indicating it is also the direction to the legendary Liuzza strawberry farm. Although their famous berries are still a few weeks from being planted, other products like cucumbers could be seen in some of their fields. When you know that Lucy is a Liuzza by birth , it is clear why she lives amid those fields, (just off Jack Liuzza Lane) on the land deeded her by her parents. She and her late husband Allen raised their children here and kept their land productive even when they took on other professional occupations.

Allen and Lucy joined the Crescent City Farmers Market shortly after it opened. The Caps (as their farm name is known) were a huge hit immediately due to Lucy’s charming customer service and Allen’s practical sense for growing their traditional yet innovative items. Lucy’s arrangements of zinnias and lilies with her decorative okra, hibiscus buds and her legendary sunflowers have remained market favorites since those early days. As Poppy Tooker wrote in the 2009 Crescent City Farmers Market cookbook: “Lucy and Al have built a reputation for forward thinking innovation. They were the first to try early harvested rapini and green garlic made so popular in California.”

Lucy’s okra, used for her bouquets.

To me, the Caps are a quintessential market vendor type: growing traditional and newer South Louisiana products on a small piece of land behind their home within sight of other family members also still farming. As a matter of fact, on one of my visits to the farm years ago, Lucy told me how much she was looking forward to letting a shopper know that next Saturday that their favorite item had been planted that week and would soon be back at market. That deep awareness of specific customer likes seemed to me then (and still) to be the best illustration of the personal touch of direct marketing farming that I have come across in my site visits.

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Louisiana Update # 8: The natural cost

The flood leaves a watermark stain on the tree’s leaves as U.S. Geological Survey surveyor Scott Hedgecock works to survey the water levels along the Tangipahoa River along Highway 190 just west of Robert, Louisiana. (Photo by Ted Jackson NOLA.com )

Climate change is not entirely accepted, even by those for whom it should be obvious possibly because it is not entirely understood. People don’t feel its effects as they move in comfort from their air-conditioned personal vehicle to living amid a span of concrete around their glass-enclosed home away from coasts or forests, getting most of their information through a thumbnail headline or from friends who work and live in the very same setting. In other words, industrialized countries.

Another culprit may be the environmental work done in the 1970s and 1980s, which often used unfamiliar phrases that lacked relevancy such as global warming (or even the term used at the beginning of this post, climate change) and focused mostly on national policy changes or in shaming users of resources without compelling evidence of the effect of that reduction. Environmentalists were seen as “do-gooders” who meant well but lacked realistic goals (this was actual feedback from focus groups at an organization I worked at in the 1980s.)

The strong pushback showed the fallacy of engaging ordinary citizens using lofty or scientific terms and led to many turning to food as an organizing tool. After all, what could be better as an impetus to understanding and sharing the repair of the natural world but food?

Yet in the roll call of environmentalists circa 2016, food system organizers are usually in the middle of the pack. Most can certainly outline the issues involved with food production that both imperil and reboot Mother Nature, but are rarely working directly on those issues in concert with environmental organizations. Farmers markets have done an admirable job on promoting entrepreneurial activity and improving access, but efforts to highlight the stewardship of the natural world by market farmers has fallen a little behind.

I hear our great writer Wendell Berry exhorting us to remember the farmers:

“Good farmers, who take seriously their duties as stewards of Creation and of their land’s inheritors, contribute to the welfare of society in more ways than society usually acknowledges, or even knows. These farmers produce valuable goods, of course; but they also conserve soil, they conserve water, they conserve wildlife, they conserve open space, they conserve scenery.”

The “eyes to acres” ratio suggested by Berry and Wes Jackson needs to be included in regional planning theory and in the metrics that assess our work. Within the framework of disaster, the acknowledgment of the need for that ratio could mean”deputizing” farmers to supply immediate indicators of the level of destruction.

Disasters point out the fragility of a place and at the same time remind us of the strength of human ties and the resolve of communities. Following that line of thinking, deeper knowledge of local and regional systems would help knit everyone more closely together, allow for rescue and recovery to happen faster even as it is offering a narrative with more relevancy to those in far-off but similarly sized food systems. If the watershed or the regional system for food production were one such way to describe the need among those participating in food initiatives, assistance could be met one farm, one family or even one small town at a time.

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Louisiana Update #7: Online support

One of the innovations I have seen in the decentralized recovery efforts (and we have moved from rescue to recovery, with rebuilding as the next step to come) is the idea of aligned organizations in New Orleans using Amazon and other online sites and their direct shipping to buy supplies for their sister organization in one of the flooded zones. Or, create or use accounts for those registered with them and send them items needed directly to the households the next day!

What we learned here in years past is that sending funds to a general account can delay support as it means that checks have to be deposited or those knee-deep in flooded homes have to manage the funds away from recovery work, wherever internet connections and computers can be found.

This method allows friends outside of the flooded zone to upload the list of items and then those items to be purchased and sent directly to those in need.

Here are 3 of those; the first one in the Baton Rouge area and the second in the Acadiana area:

Together Baton Rouge

Blessings For New Iberia Their Facebook site

The third may require a little added explanation: Many folks across the U.S. see Mardi Gras only as a time of debauchery, but in reality, it is a celebratory Lenten public event with deep community attachments. Most of the “krewes” that parade are actually social aid clubs that give back to the community throughout the year. The list of their good works is too long to list, but here is one of my favorite walking clubs that will use the direct donation process to help with recovery. They have a list of folks to send the items directly to via the online purchases made by the organization.

Dames de Perlage

I have encouraged some of the farmers in the Acadiana parishes to do this as well, as there are few if any food or farming organizations in the area to collect support on their behalf. As I receive those, I’ll post them in future updates.

For those farmers in the Baton Rouge areas, BREADA has had an active small farms fund for over a decade that will help many such farmers. I saw a sign at the New Orleans farmers market suggesting that Market Umbrella will also be setting up a farm recovery fund that will support their farmers on the North Shore hit hard by this event. More on that later as I get more information.

Truly the recovery has been managed most ably by on the ground organizations, tied together to others via word of mouth, social media or texting. The larger organizations are working as well, but seemingly unable to process real-time innovations or absorb local help very well. This is the new reality of disaster zones: two separate efforts working at the same time, rarely transecting and with different expectations. Sounds a lot like the food system.

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Louisiana Update #6: Food for everyone

Local-girl-made-good Fleurty Girl CEO Lauren LeBlanc’s FB update shows how the Louisiana culture of food and community comes together when needed. Everyone who was in the Gulf Coast from 2005-2008 remembers how a good meal after hours of tearing out drywall made it possible to come back the next day, and since eating red beans together outside in some tailgating/parade chair is a familiar practice here, normalizing.

Some of our busiest and most celebrated restaurant chefs have been the first to get food out in the worst areas after various disasters. Just like in 2005, John Besh and his fellow chefs were set up feeding first responders in flooded areas within a few days.

Free food/hot meals on Saturday, August 20th:

DENHAM SPRINGS:

-Chef Alon Shaya (!!!), of Shaya restaurant in New Orleans, will be cooking red beans and rice with the John Besh Foundation in the Ryan’s parking lot at 916 S. Range Ave in front of the Wal Mart at noon tomorrow.

-The Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation will be grilling burgers in the New Covenant Baptist Church parking lot at 215 Florida Ave (next to James’ Grill) starting serving at 11am.

-A group of NOLA friends will be grilling 1,000 burgers behind the Whitney Bank on Florida Ave in Denham Springs. They’ll also have 800 cookies from Moonshine Bake Shoppe.

-Christ’s Community Church will be setting up out front and serving 6000-8000 hot meals for lunch and dinner at 26574 Juban Road.

ALBANY
– Located at 30057 N. Cafeline Rd. Sat. August 20, starting at 11am, Red Beans, Smoked Sausage over Rice, bread & Cake

GONZALES
-Truckload of non-perishable food will be distributed at The Christian Assembly at 41258 Hwy 941 in Gonzales starting at 2pm.

-Hot meals for lunch and dinner served in the parking lot of Fellowship Church at 10757 Airline Hwy.

PRAIRIEVILLE
-Hot meals for lunch and dinner served in the parking lot of Fellowship Church at 14363 Hwy 73 in Prairieville.

ST. AMANT
-Hot meals at The Church in St. Amant at 13423 Hwy 431 in St. Amant, LA 70769.

ROBERT
-free food and misc supplies in the parking lot across from Robert Supermarket. Should get started at 11am.

Whether you’re cleaning your own home or helping someone with theirs, you’re gonna eat GOOD Saturday! ❤️❤️❤️

10,500 hot meals from @OpBBQRelief distributed at Denham Springs at Sams Club Sunday. Will be doing it again Monday.

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Food Regions of the US (Nabhan et al)

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Charlie: Now, this tour with Alanis Morrissette, tell me about her. Do you like her? Do you admire her? Is she good?

Tori: She’s a lovely person, good heart. She’s good at what she does.

Charlie: That’s it?

Tori: That’s good!

Charlie: I mean… well, was there conflict, was there tension? Or was it just a lovefest?

Charlie: Yes.

Tori: I’m the ship. (giggle)

Charlie: Yes.

Tori: I have loads of chefs.

Charlie: Yes.

Tori: And all sorts of people floating around. Thieves, fantastic. A few harlots.

Charlie: Yes.

Tori: All on my ship.

Charlie: Yes.

Tori: And we all had to come and be respected that, you know, no compromise on any level. and, she has her captain, she is her ship, and of course that’s how it had to be approached. And, because of that mutual respect it worked out really well.

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