Ferguson Farmers Market offers food, fun and more

The Ferguson Farmers Market, located near University of Missouri-St. Louis campus provides homegrown produce while contributing to the local economy.

"Real farmers, real food, real fresh," Kathy Noelker, the Ferguson Farmers Market Manager said. She was quoting the Ferguson Farmers Market's slogan. This year's tag line is: "Get Fresh, Shop Local."

Noelker explained that all of the produce available for purchase at the Ferguson Farmers Market is homegrown.

"We do not allow re-sellers, which some of the markets, are doing," Noelker said. "[Re-selling] is someone going to Soulard (produce market) with a pick-up truck and buying produce and then selling it at a farmers market, which means it has not been locally grown. We are really, really proud of that."

Noelker noted that produce shipped from elsewhere is usually picked before it is ripe in order to be shipped here and is never going to taste the same as crops allowed to ripen first.

The Ferguson Farmers Market is open Saturday mornings, 8 a.m. to noon, from May to October. Located at 20 South Florissant Road at Spot Drive in downtown Ferguson, the Ferguson Farmers Market is just under a mile and half north of I-70.

"We opened May 2. This is our seventh season," Noelker said. "We opened with 32 tents on Saturday, which is a very big opening for us."

Many of the fruits and vegetables available at the market are grown by organic methods, free from pesticides, according to Noelker. Many of the farmers use organic methods, although few are officially certified organic. The Mueller farm is the oldest farm in the state of Missouri and has never had chemical fertilizer or pesticides applied to it.

Noelker also explained that all of the farmers who participate in the Ferguson Farmers Market have farms in either Illinois or Missouri. Some of the farms have been in families for generations.

"We are so proud of our market. We have all local farmers; they are all within 100 miles," Noelker said. "Everything is picked within 24 hours to be sold on Saturday morning,"

Because everything is locally grown, the produce available when they open in May is limited. Noelker explained that early in the season there is only lettuce, spinach, radishes, some of the early crops.

"As the weeks go on, there will be more and more farmers and more and more produce," Noelker said.

Now in late June, berries and lettuces are still around but the height of summer crops like corn and tomatoes are getting closer.

It is not all fruits and veggies either. Ferguson Farmers Market offers local meats, eggs and honey, as well as flowers and hanging baskets, jellies and jams, crafts and art, and even a quick meal or snacks from local eateries.

Noelker added that the farmers market has free-range chicken and grass fed beef, things typically unavailable in a supermarket.

"[The farmers] are very, very health-conscious," Noelker said. "They don't want to use pesticides, they don't want their chickens in a coop, they want them to have walked on the ground and have eaten some grass, pecked around in the barnyard."

A visit to the farmers market this past weekend yielded baby lettuces and black raspberries from Thies Farms, purple-colored green beans from Earth Dance Farm, Kerr's Pink Potatoes, an heirloom variety from Ireland, grown on Mueller Farm, summer squash from Cascade Farms and grass-fed beef stick sausage from Seibert Farms.

Several vendors had peaches, cucumbers, zucchini and summer squash but farm eggs had already sold out earlier in the morning.

Although the Mueller family no longer farms, new farmers are using the space to grow organically. A new program at the Mueller farm, called EarthDance Farm, helps train new farmers, using an internship approach.

"There are 12 apprentices who are learning to farm organically," EarthDance farmer/apprentice Brian DeSmet said. "This is just the first year of experimenting, to see if this will work. So we are hoping to keep doing this and make sure the Mueller farm stays a farm."

Andy Burrell explained that the EarthDance Farm program is run by Molly Rockamann, who "grew up, basically, with a dream of doing [that]."

"Right now, it is very small scale," Burrell said, "so there is a lot of room for growth."

Hahn Farm has been selling produce at the market since the farmers market started. "We grow organically but aren't Certified," Andy Hahn of Hahn Farm, located in Foley, Missouri said. "We grow all kinds of produce. We will have sweet corn next week, and we will have more tomatoes."

Ferguson Farmers Market has special events every week, like a pie competition and free live music.

There are posters up on campus about the Ferguson Farmers Market and special events. In the fall, there will be a "Cook Off" between UM-St. Louis' chef Marvin Mosley of Chartwells Dining, who runs the Nosh and Florissant Valley Community College's chef Martin Lopez.

Noelker expressed her happiness at having UM-St. Louis as a neighbor, saying that she would be "thrilled to pull some of the students, faculty, and staff into the farmers market on Saturday mornings."

Supporting local farmers has other benefits besides good food, Noelker noted. According to Noelker, buying from local growers means keeping local food available and supporting a local business, which is good for the local economy and therefore all of us. Local food saves energy, since it does not have to be shipped from somewhere else, which benefits the environment in several ways.

Growing and selling heirloom varieties, as many of the farmers do, helps maintain genetic diversity in food.

"Some of the varieties [of tomato] are even called ugly but, boy, they have that flavor," Noelker said.

Ferguson Farmers Market has a website to keep you informed about what is in season, what events are going on or which band is playing on a particular weekend. The website, at www.fergusonfarmersmarket.com, also lists information on the various farmers selling their wares at the market.