Celebrity chefs, out.
Farmers, in.
Suddenly its cool to be a hick again as
…wide-eyed hipsters modishly swap their iPhones for dirty coveralls…
…green-keen eco-warriors reclaim their own little piece of Mother Earth…
…lady and gentleman farmers with a Green Acres complex get seedy…
…Facebookers drive us all crazy with their Farmville obsessions…
…and bemused octagenarian agrarians who’ve been through the ups-and-downs of real-life farming for decades sit back and wonder what all the fuss is about.
Whatever their reasons for hoping on that John Deere, the good news is that the intense passion is fostering a renewed interest in where food actually comes from (hint: not the store! Read Michael Pollan’s Food Rules, it’s a snap.). And with that, a slow but steady change in how all of us eat. Suddenly fewer of us are mindlessly consuming factory-farmed foods from the local megamart and more of us are heading to local farm markets to actually meet ‘n greet with their friendly neighborhood producers. Which is probably a good thing considering the fact that small, family run farms were teetering on the brink of extinction just a few years ago.
In an effort to bring even more light to these dirt-under-the-nails food growers, the American Farmland Trust is now promoting a nation-wide challenge to see which four farmers markets across America can really the most support from their customers.
This of course should be a cinch-up for SoCo, considering we have more farm markets than you can shake a rhubarb at.
Except there are several who aren’t signed-up. You know who you are (Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, Sebastopol, Rohnert Park, so sign up!). On the ballot are the Wednesday Night Market in Santa Rosa, the Windsor Farmer’s Market, and Occidental markets. Winning markets get national bragging rights. VOTE NOW
Which really, is a whole lot cooler than laying claim to Rocco DiSpirito or Bobby Flay.
