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	In Part 3 of their conversation about local food, former Au Sable Graduate Fellows Dave Timmer and Brook Wilke discuss farmers markets as community development by drawing on their experiences running local farmers markets. Catch up on <a href="http://ausable.org/news_and_resources/blog/conversations_local_agriculture_and_the_church#.T9Ytzb93ZiA">Part 1</a> and <a href="http://ausable.org/news_and_resources/blog/conversations_whats_local_food#.T9Ytmb93ZiA">Part 2</a>.</p>
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	<strong><img alt="" src="{filedir_5}Richland-Farmers-Market-200pxl(1).jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 128px; float: right;" /></strong><strong>Dave Timmer</strong>: Brook, starting a farmers market tends to be more community development rather than conservation, but there is a connection. Being involved in a market (and specifically organizing one) connects you to a lot of people - a wide diversity of people (politically, religiously, experientially). But a common thread amongst them tends to be an affinity for a place. What I mean by that is the people involved in a market (craft vendors, produce vendors, city officials, customers, etc.) seem to have a deliberate connection to the place where they live. There is a recognition of the importance of community involvement and strengthening that community. I think a farmers market is a key component of a strong local food system and a strengthening local economy.</p>
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	<strong>Brook Wilke</strong>: I concur with your conclusion that community development is a large component of the market; we&#39;re now operating on the grounds of our local school district, which gives us a location that is very central to the entire community. We&#39;re bringing together not just farmers and customers, but community organizations like the YMCA, the local preschool, 4H, the library, and school clubs through special events, just to name a few. It&#39;s really becoming a fun place to be on Wednesdays during the summer.</p>
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	<strong>Dave</strong>: It sounds to me like there&rsquo;s an &quot;attractiveness&quot; of the market for your town. People like to come to it. I found that at ours as well - it became a place for locals to take visitors when they come to town. Talk about that some - how does your market build community? I think this a major benefit of, not only farmers markets, but a strong local economy. Wendell Berry ties the two together in <em>The Work of Local Culture</em> when he says, &quot;A good community&hellip; is a good local economy.&rdquo; Of course, local food production and the ability to sell it has to be a part of a &quot;good&quot; local economy.</p>
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	<strong>Brook</strong>: I love a good Wendell Berry quote - thanks for including that. The goals of <a href="http://richlandfarmersmarket.weebly.com">our market</a> are threefold: 1) to be a profitable outlet for local farmers and craft vendors, 2) to create a gathering spot and opportunity for social interactions for Richland area residents, and 3) to provide a predictable, ample selection and variety of&nbsp;<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}Beans-200pxl.jpg" style="float: right; width: 200px; height: 268px; " />high quality fresh, locally-grown produce and crafts for customers. Thus, community strengthening is a big part of what we want to do. I&#39;m not sure I can describe through words exactly what&#39;s happening, and I have a different angle on it being a market manager, but it&#39;s amazing to see 1,000 people flow into the market in a three hour period (the population of Richland is about 760, but many people live in the country or around lakes nearby). As a market manager, I&#39;ve developed friendships with so many people that I never would have met otherwise, from other farmers and crafters, regular customers, supporters and leaders of local organizations just through our normal operations.</p>
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	One of my very favorite parts of a market day is when I see a customer walk out with a bushel basket full of potatoes, green beans, or other produce to take home and preserve. This reminds me of a Joel Salatin message in <a href="http://folksthisaintnormal.com/"><em>Folks This Ain&#39;t Normal</em></a> that many market customers aren&#39;t at the market to buy substantial amounts of food, but instead buy some flowers and a snack, which is good, but abnormal relative to the rest of human history. Do you see customers at your market buying bulk quantities for things like preserving? In our present age of fast food, food preservation is generally left in the hands of a few large businesses. Is this a sustainable option, or do markets need to be an avenue for people to buy bulk foods for home preserving?</p>
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	<strong>Dave</strong>: I haven&#39;t read Joel Salatin&#39;s latest, but I appreciate his presence in our culture. It is interesting as we see these &quot;celebrity&quot; personalities popping up whose purpose is to promote the local food system. More power to them. &nbsp;</p>
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	Food preservation is a lost art, isn&rsquo;t it? Why would I spend countless hours cleaning, cutting, and canning salsa when I can buy a jar at the grocery store for $2.39? True, but next time you open your next jar of homemade salsa around the table with friends soak in the appreciation as they dive into it. &quot;You made this, wow!&quot; It isn&#39;t self-adulation, but it reflects that deep down appreciation that we all have for art. Thank God.</p>
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	We hosted a seminar last summer on home preservation methods - it was well attended. One aspect of the seminar that I loved was the inter-generational attendance. The older generation remembers preserving the harvest for the winter, the younger generation is realizing the artful aspect of it. &nbsp;</p>
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	<strong>Brook</strong>: Our farmers&#39; market partnered with the local library last year for a couple of seminars, one of which was based around food preservation. Only five people showed up, and two of them were library employees. I was pretty pessimistic after the low turnout. Trying to evaluate the situation, it seems that people are just too busy to think about food preservation; it&#39;s still too easy to get it at the store. And, I know that it&#39;s not because people already know how to preserve food.</p>
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	<strong>Dave</strong>: In regards to your question of people buying large quantities of produce at the market specifically for preserving. I don&#39;t see many people coming to the market to buy large quantities of produce for preserving. The biggest reason is probably the cost&hellip;market produce generally isn&#39;t cheap. It is hard to justify canning your <img alt="" src="{filedir_5}Food-preservation-workshop-200pxl.jpg" style="float: right; width: 200px; height: 268px; " />fresh green beans that you just bought for more than $10 when you can buy a can at the grocery store for $.75. Personally, the only time I&#39;ve ever purchased large amounts of something for preserving was peaches. That is because I can&#39;t grow peaches. I can grow most everything else that I want to preserve. That being said, I don&#39;t think relying on a couple large companies for preservation is sustainable. That is why we need to keep having seminars on preservation (see right), we need to create opportunities for the older generation to teach the younger generation how to can, and we need to teach people how to grow at least something in the backyard. This is an art form that can&#39;t be lost. Thankfully, after seeing my friends gobble up another jar of salsa, I don&#39;t think it will be. &nbsp;</p>
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	<strong>Brook</strong>: I love how you brought up the &quot;art&quot; of food preservation. Farming itself can be beautiful and very much an &quot;art;&quot; but the increasingly large scale of grain and livestock farming tends to remove nearly all of the art and convert it to business. Subsequently, this loss of the &quot;art&quot; of farming makes it very difficult to deeply know the land and care for it properly, which is necessary to sustain its productivity.&nbsp;</p>
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	That &quot;art&quot; and emotion involved in growing, harvesting, and preserving food is invisible to those that haven&#39;t experienced it. I didn&#39;t even fully realize this until I had my own farm, even though I grew up on a family farm. I feel very blessed to be able to experience this nearly every day now. And, these emotions range from terrible, as with the death of an animal, to thrilling, such as with a birth, to satisfying, as with the last jar of tomatoes coming out of the canner, or to respect and thankfulness as with the slaughter of an animal. It&#39;s that experience that many people need to propel their engagement with the art of food.</p>
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	In case you missed it, read&nbsp;<a href="/news_and_resources/blog/conversations_local_agriculture_and_the_church">Part 1</a>&nbsp;on local food and churches and <a href="/news_and_resources/blog/conversations_whats_local_food">Part 2</a> on what does it mean for food to be &quot;local&quot;?</p>
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	<em><strong>Dave Timmer</strong>&nbsp;took Winter Stream Ecology during a very snowy January (1999) and was part of the first group of&nbsp;<a href="http://ausable.org/alumni_and_grad_fellows/#GradFellows">Au Sable Grad Fellows</a>&nbsp;at the University of Michigan. After several years in the conservation field, he is now the Stewardship Director for A Rocha USA in NW Washington. This work includes watershed restoration, conservation science projects and managing Five Loaves Farm. Through Five Loaves Farm, A Rocha is working on ways to build a stronger local food system, including the establishment of the Lynden Farmers Market.</em></p>
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	<em><strong>Brook Wilke</strong>&nbsp;was born and raised on a grain and livestock family farm in Nebraska. He earned a Bachelors degree in biology/ecology from Nebraska Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in agroecology from Michigan State University. Wilke is an Au Sable Graduate Fellow alumnus and helped start the&nbsp;<a href="http://ausable.org/alumni_and_grad_fellows/#GradFellows">G</a><a href="http://ausable.org/alumni_and_grad_fellows/#GradFellows">raduate Fellows program</a>&nbsp;at Michigan State. Currently, he manages the Richland Farmers&#39; Market in Richland, MI and operates Wilke Farms in Plainwell, MI where his family produces organic vegetables and free range pork and eggs.</em></p>
