Midtown Farmers Market Face-Lift

We attended a community meeting in Midtown Minneapolis last evening – fighting a driving snow storm to get there and back – and found it invigorating and far different than our low-key life in the country.
by Charlie Leck

4 April 2014
We attended a community gathering last night in the northeast corner of the Corcoran Neighborhood in Minneapolis. A block of property, right next to the Lake Street station of the Hiawatha Light Rail Line, is currently owned by the Minneapolis School Board. Hennepin County is seriously considering a purchase of this property and a redevelopment of it that involves significant cooperation with the residential and business interests of that neighborhood. The plan is only in its embryonic stage and there will be lots more of these conversations in order to bring a wide spectrum of varying interests and stake-holders together.

We were there because my wife has been a vendor at the Midtown Farmers Market, which sets up on that piece of property, ever since the market first opened. We don’t have much of a financial stake in the neighborhood, but we’ve developed an emotional attachment to a lot of the people there and we feel strongly about the market’s future. And, we like the work that the Corcoran Neighborhood Organization does in sponsoring this market and advocating for the health and welfare of the entire neighborhood.

It will be four or five years down the road before the changes and developments really impact the market and, by that time, my wife will likely be retiring from this rugged lamb production work she does. It may be just as well. Though the market will likely become a much more attractive place in a very busy and bustling location, there will be much less room for getting a pickup truck and a freezer trailer in place to offer the product we sell.

You can see some of this early thinking about the development of the site on the Midtown Farmers Market web site. I've also included a photo that graphically explains the change in size of the market. The entire development will certainly be a mixed use location that will feature housing for various incomes and ages, retail and office availability and a home for a neighborhood center for the county’s health and human services work.

The neighborhood residents in the current single family houses – to the south and immediate southwest – are worried about the increase of traffic and parking in the areas where they live. There is currently a significant Park & Ride site for users of the light rail line and that space will be gobbled up by the development. That adds more worries for home owners who don’t want curb-side parking to increase in their residential neighborhood. The chances for conversation about these matters were very limited last night because of the jam-packed agenda and one could sense that a number of special interests were given too little time for an expression of their concerns – including bicyclists, home-owners, environmentalists and sustainability advocates.

We came away feeling that this is a very exciting project! The farmers market will certainly change in character and I see it becoming much more like the current Mill City Farmers Market down alongside the Guthrie Theater – and that’s not a bad thing. We’ve made a lot of good friends at the Midtown Market and in the Corcoran neighborhood and we wish them nothing but great good luck on this very exhilarating time that lies ahead for them.

In the meantime, we look forward to the opening of the 2014 Midtown Farmers Market on Saturday, May 3rd and we’ll see you there.

It was some drive home last night in the heavy April snowstorm that rolled into the Twin Cities. We took between 10 and 11 inches of snow here on our farm.

Miscellaneous Thoughts
We enjoyed listening to the presentations of various interest groups last night and we learned quite a bit about how community organization and the nature of communities have changed over the years. We allow ourselves to get pretty isolated out here in the country and we have to catch up on some of the terminology we hear at a meeting like this – co-housing (I sat down this morning and did a bunch of reading to understand it), green-living, Leeds Housing, solar energy, water conservation in housing development and sustainability.

Various interests at the meeting last night (some of the stake-holders) have quite a job ahead of them. I’m talking about the Minneapolis School Board, the Hennepin County Commissioners, the Corcoran Neighborhood Organization and the City of Minneapolis. I hope the YWCA, which owns property just to the west, will also be very involved.

Hey!
There was a point in the meeting where I wanted to stand up and shout-out proudly that we installed a geo-thermal heating system in our home just this past autumn. We’re not complete hicks or country-bumpkins, you know!

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Memoir: Sunday Morning

It’s Sunday (“Another Sunday,” I’m tempted to write; however, I don’t like to take Sundays so casually for granted.)
by Charlie Leck

A small pile of books sits on the corner of my desk to my right. On a shelf, in the bookcases also to my right, are, perhaps, two dozen uncategorized and assorted books. From the volumes in the biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson, to Eric Fromer’s book on the reconstruction of the union following the ugly war between the states, to Bill Bryson’s book on travels in Europe and then a biography of Henry Aaron, these books comprise my reading list. They share that list with a number of titles on my iPad reader: The Best American Short Stories; Little Crow; The Warmth of Other Suns.

Oh, how often have I written in praise of Sunday morning!
It’s Sunday morning. The massive New York Times sit on the kitchen counter, near where I’ll have a gluten-free English muffin just a little later – along with another cup of coffee (made from freshly ground beans from Sumatra).

A walk is a necessity, to keep these old (nearly 72 year old) legs working and usable. I’ll be tempted to forget about the exercise today so I can get on with the reading and, perhaps, watch also a little of the men’s Olympic gold-medal basketball game on TV today. My camera is the motivator. If I take my camera along on the walk there is always the chance I’ll come upon the wild turkeys or that the sun will splash just so through the leaves of the trees. Walks are more easily accomplished when I have my camera in hand.

Finally, there are photos to work on. I went into town yesterday to visit my wife at the farmers’ market where she sets up every Saturday. I met, finally, her friend and market helper, Ingrid, about whom she often talks so glowingly. What a genuine and nice girl.

     Ingrid, who helps my wife at the Midtown Farmers Market

I’d urge everyone to go to a farmers market near them a few times during the season, just to see the glorious colors and the peaceful, happy faces of the sellers who so joyfully present the work of their hands. I took market photos because I was so fascinated by it all. The farmers’ market movement is one of the really good things that has happened in our nation in the last two decades.

     The two fantastic young women who sell the most wonderful rolled butter
     just a few booths down from my wife's.

     Over the years, my wife's good customers have also become
      friends who she enjoys seeing again and again.

Sundays are special. I can’t explain it. They just are. People move more slowly on Sunday; they seem more satisfied with life – more generous – more accepting of what they are and of what other people are as well. Soon, the church bells will toll from way down in Saint Bonifacius (five miles away) and I’ll hear them up here in my tree-top library because the doors and windows are open on this cool morning.

Let this stand this morning as my confessionem (L. from confiteri).

“We should be confessing our complicity with the Powers, the ways we benefit from the injustices they structure to our advantage, and the racist and sexual stereotyping that we thoughtlessly perpetuate in our encounters with others. Instead, we tend to confess infractions of the rules the Powers themselves have established. – Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers

Confession, as Saint Augustine understood it, is our proclamation of faith – our statement about the power and graciousness of God and our thankful response to it.

“Grant me, Lord, to know and understand which is first, to call on Thee or to praise Thee? And, again, to know Thee or to call on Thee? For who can call on Thee, not knowing Thee?” – Saint Augustine, The Confessions of Saint Augustine.

     Entertainment at the market ranges from good to wonderful!

     A couple agrees to pose for me. I find the people at the
     market beautiful.

     Most of the visitors to the market just pass on by
     and we love to observe them.

     I want to stop some people to tell them how beautiful they
     look, but I would only frighten them!

     

     To walk around and see the colors is alone enough reason to go
     the farmers' market!

_________________________

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BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK

Things didn’t go well yesterday after my wife came home in an absolute funk…
by Charlie Leck

Things are normally pretty peaceful around here on a Saturday. And, my wife is normally a very stable, even-keeled and rock of a person. Today, however, around two o’clock she called to tell me her billfold was stolen – this is the billfold with all her credit cards (at least four), a debit and cash withdrawal card (ATM), driver’s license, passport data card, insurance card, Medicare card and $340 in cash. There’s probably a dozen other items in there that she can’t think of right now in her agitated state.

A couple of 14 year old kids ran a con on her as she was loading up her truck after the Midtown Farmers Market closed yesterday. She has both a trailer to pack up and also some things to load into the backseat, interior compartment of her pickup truck – table cloths, signs, business and recipe cards, some sheepskins, an adding machine. It takes a couple of trips from the back of the trailer to the driver’s side of the pickup – not more than twenty feet. She started the whole process with the first trip to the pickup yesterday, leaving the door open because she knew she’d be right back and really hardly out of sight of the open door. Her purse was laying on the backseat.

What happened after that first load of little things was put in the pickup is that a fine little gentleman of about 14 interrupted her when she was back at the trailer and asked her a couple of questions about lamb. He had never eaten lamb he said sweetly.

“Is it good?”

Well, oh my, my wife thinks so and she told him. He asked another couple of questions about its tenderness and taste. My wife was pleased by his sense of curiosity and she climbed inside the freezer trailer to find him a package of lamb steaks as a gift.

“Take them home and have your mom try them,” she suggested to the young man. He was mighty pleased and thanked her with a big smile as he climbed on his bicycle and road away.

Well, it was plenty of time for his partner-in-crime to rifle my wife’s purse, find the billfold right at the top of the heap of stuff she keeps in there, and be off to the hinter lands of south Minneapolis.

She was frantic.

“What can I do?”

Well, we climbed in my car and headed for Minneapolis. As we drove, she called various credit card companies by using the phone numbers on the back of my cards and canceled the cards immediately.

My big idea is that we would go down to the farmers market and look in the trash cans and the portable toilet on the south end of the parking lot because that’s the way the two boys would likely have gone.

“Perhaps they peeled out the cash and threw the rest away.”

Well, the toilet area was locked up when we got there and so was the trash and sanitation stand next to it.” I looked down an alley across the street and noticed there were trash cans behind every house all the way down the alley. Over at the YMCA, across the street, there were big garbage dumpsters. There were even bigger ones at the big high school just a block away. Things were looking pretty hopeless.

There was a police precinct station just a few blocks away. I decided we’d go over there and report the incident. A patrolman met us in the parking lot as we approached the building and asked if he could help. We told him the sorry story. He shook his head in despair and showed us a look that indicated we ought to be more careful with our belongings.

“You understand there’s no chance we’ll catch them.”

“Yes, but shouldn’t we still report the crime?” My wife was sounding a little incredulous.

“You can call 3-1-1 and report it. They’re closed down for the weekend, but you can call on Monday. Or, you can file a report on the Internet’s 3-1-1 site.”

All was hopeless! Clearly!

We drove home! More correctly, I drove and thought I’d take the express lane on the freeway as I almost always do. I moved left to slide into it and only then spotted the gates indicating it was closed. Odd that it would be closed at 4:20 in the afternoon. It was always open then, but, then, this was a Saturday.

I needed to hurriedly move out of the lane and back to the right. I started to, but there was a car already there, right next to me. I had to jerk the car back left and couldn’t stop before one of the big gates slammed against the rear view mirror on my side of the car and plucked it off as neatly and cleanly as you could imagine. Only the electronic control-wiring was left staring into the car at me. Damn!

I couldn’t stop. It was a narrow, single lane area, raised above the city below me. Cars were coming like crazy. I accelerated and joined the flow of traffic. Of course, my wife, who had been on the phone with another credit card agency, screamed when she heard the smash of the gate against my rear view mirror, startling the poor fellow she was chatting with and me as well.

The ride home was a bit perilous – what without a rear view mirror and all and my wife’s continuous moaning about what a horrible day it had become. The Twins were getting their fannies handed to them too, and it was no relief listening to that game on the radio.

It was just a plain, old, bad day at Black Rock started by a couple of shrewed little fourteen year old kids on their bikes.

Are there lessons here? I could see the policeman’s face looking at us and I could tell he was thinking we were just a couple of farmer-hicks in from the countryside and ripe for picking.

“Maybe you ought to be a little more careful when you come into the city!”

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MIDTOWN FARMERS MARKET

On a beautiful Saturday morning, a visit to a farmers market is not a bad idea!
by Charlie Leck

I visited the Midtown Farmers Market in Minneapolis yesterday. Not a bad place to be. Lots of really nice people and good food, too. It's too early in Minneapolis for local produce, but with each passing week one watches more and more fresh, delicious items beginning to show up. My wife, Anne, makes the trip almost every Saturday, to set up her lamb booth. She's made a lot of terrific customers down there, who've also become good friends, and she enjoys those Saturday morning chats she has with many of them.

This is the beautiful pickle lady. They sell home canned pickles, pickled tomatoes, beats, peppers and other wonderful delicacies.

And these are some of her pickles.

I designed the original web images for this farmers market web page, including the banner up there with the title of this blog. I thought we had their web site looking really good; but, over time, with first this person and then that one tampering with and altering the site, it has become a pretty distasteful mish-mash of clashing flavors.

The market -- this one and all the others -- is a wonderful place to take photographs and I'll just leave you with this little show of my visit yesterday.

Two Pony Farm, which is out near our farm, is my favorite place to buy tomatoes when the season finally arrives. At the Midtown Farmers Market they were selling some of their heirloom tomato plants.


I've been exchanging emails with Ruthie for months and months, but we never met before yesterday. She owns Ruthie's Kitchen and makes wonderful items to sell at the market, including jams and spreads and all kinds of great baked goods. I bought a loaf of her Bohemian Rye and it was really wonderful.

Here's part of Ruthie's display.

And, here's one of the shoppers at the Midtown Farmers Market.

This is the magic hot dog bus!