The days have started to get longer and still the snow has been piling up. It has been a very snowy winter to-date, although it has not drifted much. – Knock on wood! - There is a lot of winter left and we have not even started on the snowiest part of the season.
Aside from the snow, one of my friends at work said her chickens are starting to lay eggs again which is another sign that spring inching closer and the days are getting longer – even the weather does not show it. While shopping the other day, I picked up the first packets of seeds from the rack at the store. They were all on sale, which was a bonus. I did have to chuckle to myself while I was peeling the frozen solid bricks of soil and seed starter from the outdoor shelf at the home supply store in below zero temperatures. To top it off, I am pretty sure the cashier was thinking my growing ambitions were a little less innocent than the facts.
I have started to gather information about who to talk to and what kinds of places are available for the market related events. Southern Valley Health Watch has set aside a donation for the market. I hope that we can work together on some events to build a customer base and get more people involved in being active and eating healthy – the market’s primary objective.
Tonight, I drew up a matrix of the event ideas that I have and scored them on different values to see if one stood out from the rest. I gave each event a score in eight categories like the crowd gathering ability, the effect on health and wellness, and the ability to bring people together as a community. The event with the highest score on my chart was “You buy it, we’ll cook it”. The idea is to have people gather some of their favorite items from the market and we will have some cooks, possibly culinary students, making the items into a stir-fry right in front of them. It would be like a Mongolian grill.
Some of my other ideas which I think would be good are a kids’ day and a community organizations day. On the kids’ day, I would like to have games and stands which would help get the children interested in coming to the market and picking out fresh foods. They could learn about new foods that they may not have had before or did not like to eat in the past.
The community orgs. day would be about getting more diverse groups involved in the market and diversifying the community. I was thinking groups like the local religious organizations, health and wellness groups, and extension service could set up a booth and get people from their followings to visit the market and learn more about the groups they don’t know much about. We could all gain some people along the way.
I would also like to see a health and wellness event which would allow local fitness groups to show off a bit. There could be massages on site and vendors of health supplements like Herbalife could peddle their goods. Perhaps, Southern Valley Health Watch would hold a walk that evening.
… Okay, one more for now… ‘Get out and grow something.’ The idea is to get people to try to grow something - a small patch in their backyard. I can put together some materials for some raised beds and instruction of how to build them. I am not sure but if the city has free compost, I can build the boxes to hold the amount of free compost that is available. I know Fargo gave out 1 cubic yard of compost to those willing to pick it up. That is enough to make a good sized garden for a novice gardener. We could also have vendors of plants, like greenhouses, to sell small plants for the garden. To follow up, during the season we could offer information, Q & A, of how to grow and manage a garden. It really isn’t that difficult if you stick to a small area.
Although, there are still several months before the market starts, it seems that there is not much time to get many of these ideas on the table. There is a lot of planning and brainstorming to be done before the ideas will fruit.
Best wishes for the new year!
Daryl
Daryl,
ReplyDeleteYou have some fantastic ideas. Have you thought about getting some people to grow or bring more ethnic type foods to the market. There are people from other countries who would love to buy fresh produce locally, specialty items that perhaps they can only get in a dehydrated form. I'm not sure how easy it is to grow those items, which ones they would be, or who would buy them. Perhaps Cat can shed some light in that area or grow some Asian produce.
Mom