 Next week I will be examining the phenomenon of the farmers
market. The focus is on Springfield’s Old Capitol market, which has been
operating continuously for some 20 years, after some years at a different
location in the 1980s.
Of course, Springfield’s is not the only venerable market of
this type. This year will be the 40th for the market in Evanston, for example,
which hosts half again as many vendors as Springfield’s. (That means it started
in 1975, which tell you everything you need to know about the phenomenon.)
Anyone who thinks of Downstate as a garden and Chicago as a
desert forgets about the
farmland that surrounds Chicago in Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana whose
husbandmen sell at the Green City market in Lincoln Park, which draws up
to 10,000 on a nice weekend, operates year ‘round and offers foodstuffs that
even grandmothers don’t know how to cook.
Sometimes assumed to be a phenomenon of farm country,
farmers markets are most popular in big cities. Boston hosts something like
three dozen – open-air, indoors, and now year ‘around markets, plus plans to
convert an empty state government building into a permanent 28,000-square-foot
market house.
Springfield has built at least three permanent
sites where farmers and eaters could meet to commit commerce. None survived far
into the 20th century. The most spectacular was probably Portland, Oregon’s, Portland Public
Market on the Willamette riverfront. it was thought to be the
world’s largest
public market. Alas, in a move that belies the city reputation for urbanist
sophistication, the city tore it down in 1969 and replaced with a ho-hum park
packed with “festivals meant to attract people to a space they otherwise never
visit.
And why, by the way, are they called “farmers markets”? Wouldn’t “farm markets” be more accurate?Â
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2015.
