<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tashadoestulsa/4129264641/" title="Turkey at Downing Family Farm by Tasha Does Tulsa, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2599/4129264641_2d855b3396_o.jpg" width="472" height="480" alt="Turkey at Downing Family Farm" /></a></div><div><br /></div>The fable of the grasshopper and the ant is an allegory for how hard work during good times can prepare a person for the struggles that lie ahead. That rings true for lovers of Tulsa-grown food as it did for their agrarian grandparents before them.<br /><br />If no one raised his own meat, dairy and eggs and no one preserved summer’s bounty to supplement a cellar full of winter squashes, everyone would be headed to the grocery store for apples grown in Fiji and meat raised by factory foremen rather than local farmers.<br /><br />As <a href="http://cherrystreetfarmersmarket.com">Cherry Street Farmers Market</a>, the largest farmers market in the Tulsa area, came to a close this summer, though, one man had an idea.<br /><br />“My customers would ask, ‘What am I going to do without your eggs?’ and, ‘I don’t want to have to go a grocery store for my chicken,’” said <a href="http://www.downingfamilyfarm.com/">Wes Downing of Downing Family Farm</a>, 90 miles northeast of Tulsa in Grove.<br /><br />After some thought and a little hustling for partnerships, Tulsa Clean Food Market was born.<br /><br /><a href="http://tulsabusiness.com/industry_article.asp?cID=i&amp;aID=317041902.2786478.650793.2352656.4605661.936&amp;aID2=50052">Learn more about the Tulsa Clean Food Market on the Food page of this week's edition of Tulsa Business Journal</a>.<br /><br /><div class="zemanta-pixie" style="margin-top:10px;height:15px"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://reblog.zemanta.com/zemified/8f959dcf-cfc4-4c82-a01c-d584ecbfbf91/" title="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]"><img class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=8f959dcf-cfc4-4c82-a01c-d584ecbfbf91" alt="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" style="border:none;float:right" /></a><span class="zem-script more-related pretty-attribution"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.zemanta.com/readside/loader.js" defer="defer"></script></span></div>