[Danielle Balocca]: Hey Medford Bites listeners, I hope you all had a great Pride Month and exciting end to the school year. The City has been negotiating a budget over the last several weeks, and if you've not checked out Zach Baer's proposal to fix the budget gaps, you can check it out on his Facebook and Instagram pages. Today's episode includes a conversation with the organizers of the Medford Farmers Market. Follow links in the show notes to find out more. I hope you enjoy. All right, thank you both for being here with me today. If we could start out just by introducing yourself. So if you could say your name, your pronouns, and just a bit about who you are.
[Heather Meekergreen]: Sure. My name is Heather Meeker-Green. I go by she, her, and I am the president of the board of directors of the Medford Farmers Market. I'm also a fairly longtime member of our resident of Medford at this point. I've been here, I think, 25 years. It's hard. Time flies. And I live in the South Medford area. Thank you.
[QjB8-1pZ1Vk_SPEAKER_08]: And I'm Jane Hamill and I use she, her, and I am the market manager. So on Thursdays during the market, I am there making sure everything is as it should be and that we're all having a good time and getting the, you know, getting what we need. I live in Haines Square. So near the Roberts Elementary School off the Fellsway. And yeah, we've been here for about 15 years.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. Thanks for the introductions. So the other question that I always ask folks on the podcast is what your favorite place to eat is in Medford and what you like to eat there. I think it's okay if you have a favorite of the moment. It doesn't have to be all time. It can be hard.
[Heather Meekergreen]: Okay, great, because I was going to say, it's hard living here this long to say this is the favorite. I love a lot of different places, but right now, especially with the spring, beautiful weather, one of the places I love in my neighborhood, because I can walk to it, is Grounder Cafe, and I can walk up there. They have outside seating, and I often will enjoy a breakfast sandwich or a tea or coffee, that kind of thing, but I love that.
[QjB8-1pZ1Vk_SPEAKER_08]: So good over there. I am a big fan of this Brazilian bakery right on Salem Street. It's called Douglas's Bakery. And they sell, and I don't speak Brazilian, so I probably mispronounced it, but it's pão de queijo. So it's cheesy bread, we call it. It's like little buns of like tapioca and cheese. And they're amazing. And I just love going there and getting some.
[Danielle Balocca]: My son goes to the Roberts. I say drive past there a lot. And I've always wondered, it looks really good from the outside.
[QjB8-1pZ1Vk_SPEAKER_08]: It's good. We used to do like a mom's get together there. And like they have, you know, the coffee's good. They have smoothies, eggs, desserts, rice pudding. It's all good.
[Danielle Balocca]: everything you could want in the morning.
[QjB8-1pZ1Vk_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, I know. So food is also part of the farmer's market. So I'm wondering, maybe it's a good way to transition to talking about what you all do, kind of tell us a little bit about the farmer's market, how you got involved, why you feel it's important.
[Heather Meekergreen]: Sure, so the farmer's market is typical, I guess, to many farmer's markets in that we have local vendors and businesses join us for our summer season. Ours started in 2007, so we are in our 16th year, which is fantastic. And we've been in various locations around Medford. in the square by the cemetery, in the Whole Foods parking lot, if you can believe that, in the corner of City Hall in the parking lot area there. And then we finally landed in what we think is a beautiful space, which is at the Condon Shell, Mystic River Parkway by the river. And we're really enjoying it there. And so my involvement came about when a colleague who is also on the board was looking for new ideas and new people. And I really love, I was just at the right moment to be looking for how do I give back to the community? How do I get involved and meet more people? Most of the people I'd been meeting were through the school because I had kids and I hadn't really branched out to meet new people. So it was perfect timing six years ago and I joined the board. It's all volunteer board, so. Thank you. Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: Jane, would you add anything?
[QjB8-1pZ1Vk_SPEAKER_08]: Um, no, I think I think Heather covered it.
[Danielle Balocca]: I'm curious if you all have a favorite part about the farmers market or like a favorite story or memory of being a part of it.
[Heather Meekergreen]: Jane, I'll let you go.
[QjB8-1pZ1Vk_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, you know, so yeah, there are many favorite parts of the farmers market for me. Um, so this is my fourth year. Um, and so I love the community piece of it and that we see not only like I see people that I know, which is a really fun perk when you're working, but also just like seeing the sense of community around me, seeing people who like run into each other and go, Oh my gosh, I haven't seen you in forever. And then they spend the next hour kind of hanging out, right. And at this beautiful green space in our community. people who meet up, families who bring their little kids, where there is space where they can run around and kind of be and the parents can kind of chat, you know, like actual conversation some of the time. And then people just meeting new folks too. So when we have like community tables, local organizations kind of sharing what they do and just the interest that that generates in the way that people learn just about what's available in Medford, because there's so much here, right? There's so much that goes on in our city. And I don't think anyone like knows all of it. So it's nice to see so much of it happening right there.
[Danielle Balocca]: sure and it's so it sounds like there are elements of the farmers market that are about food, and also about the sort of like community organizations or like resources, can you say a little bit about like kind of who you've had there what's been popular.
[QjB8-1pZ1Vk_SPEAKER_08]: yeah do you want me to do that or. Yeah, well, so of course, we always have farmers at the farmers market, and we've had a range of folks. Most of our farmers come from like about an hour away, where there is more farmland to be had than right here. We also often have, you know, like micro greens or other produce. We used to have a really amazing lettuce grower. It was just so good. And then we also tend to have kind of more specialty products. So whether that's things like jams or jellies or honey or pasta from Dino's pasta, or I think, oh gosh, like the ice cream, or we have some hot sauce vendors. Q's Nuts, which is based in Somerville, they come and they have their kind of their flavored nuts. And then there's like even other, right, there's the arts and crafts. and like activities. Yeah, there's so many different things. But so I think for the food, there's a wide range, like there's bread. And so I often actually what I'll do is end up picking up like my next day's dinner just at the market, just like whatever's there, whatever looks good this week and just kind of go around and get it. We have meats, we'll have fish some weeks this upcoming season. We haven't had in a while, so yeah.
[Heather Meekergreen]: Yeah, I love that we have a wide variety and for me, the intersection of having the opportunity to bring all these local businesses and let them have space and let them, you know, share their wonderful food and crafts, you know, I just, I feel really privileged that we can create that space for everybody. A couple of us on the board remember the days when there were some of the products that actually kind of got incubated in a way at our market they started as a table in a, you know, in their home and now they're, they have storefronts and they you know really expanded. So we love, you know, providing that opportunity. for the local businesses and community and even expanding that with our music program and performance program so we have local musicians now that we can offer stipends to thanks to the Medford Arts Council and their wonderful grant that they've given us so you know again as Jane said the community is it's so amazing to just create that space.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I'm picturing like heading down there on a Thursday and like getting something to eat, watching a show, bringing your kids, have it like, sounds like a nice way to spend an evening.
[QjB8-1pZ1Vk_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah. And I'm hearing rumors that on some of the concert nights and such that there might be, at the concert night, that there might be a repeat beer garden occurring. So we'll have to, you know, folks will keep their eye out. We're not the hosts of that, but it would be kind of next door to us. So it's a good time.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. Cool, and I think sometimes like when we think about a farmer's market, there can be this like sort of reputation that some farmers markets have for being sort of exclusive in terms of like socioeconomic status. I'm wondering if there's any element to your farmer's market that like does something to be mindful of that.
[Heather Meekergreen]: Definitely. I was thinking as you were talking about, you know, earlier about our community, and we were just discussing the fact that it's very hard to pin a demographic. You have, like you said, the stereotypical farmers market person, but we really have anybody and everybody from Medford come to our market. We can't even sort of narrow to anything, age, socioeconomic or anything. And partly that's in place because One of the important things we started in the early days was a program in which we get sponsors or fundraise or get grants so that we can provide a match for SNAP EBT customers. And every year we have to decide, you know, based on what we've gotten in terms of our fundraising and sponsorship, how much we can match each week. In many weeks, it's been $20 per week per family that we can match. So they get double their money when they swipe their card, basically. But this year, we've been very blessed with a couple of generous donors. And so we are offering $30 this year per week per swipe, up to. want to get your fresh food from local farms and get it you know on a Thursday we are there three to seven every week and hope that you will join us and stop at the manager's table and we'll walk you through it's very simple process to get and we offer market dollars so that they can spend it anywhere at the market.
[Danielle Balocca]: That's great and yeah right I've heard about that program it's great to know that that's happening at the Medford Farmers Market.
[Heather Meekergreen]: yeah and then we're also adding this year we've gotten an extra grant that we're trying to sort of solidify a program we did a pilot program a few years ago for senior produce so that we will provide bags every week of fresh vegetables that are coming from one of our farms for an extremely reduced price so they would get fresh food delivered every week so that's again something where it's in the works, it should be more prominent in our newsletters and things as soon as we get a little more details, but that'll be happening mid-summer.
[Danielle Balocca]: So we've mentioned that it's Thursday nights. Do you want to mention when the farmers market will start?
[QjB8-1pZ1Vk_SPEAKER_08]: Go for it, Jane. Sure. So our opening day is Thursday, June 9th. We wanted to give our farmers a little bit of time to actually grow food, which gets tricky in the New England Springs. So June 9th is when we open from 3 to 7, and we're there all the way through October 13th. And then this year, we are also planning a repeat of our really popular Thanksgiving market that we had, gosh, right before COVID. We did a Thanksgiving market, and so we're planning a repeat of that. of the week before Thanksgiving. Indoors.
[Danielle Balocca]: People have gotten heartier through COVID doing things like that. Maybe not. No, we don't have to, sure. And so if somebody wanted to be involved, like become a vendor or become involved in maybe with like being a part of the farmer's market, how might they do that?
[Heather Meekergreen]: Oh, there's several opportunities on our website. We have all the information and we'll share it with you to share with everybody for becoming a vendor. It's very simple. There's a form you fill out and you send it in and then we assess. You know how how you would fit and what space we have. If you know some of the weeks we've gotten very full, we used to have a handful of people every week and now we're up to many weeks and talks 2224 vendors. So we're definitely. increasing in that way. In terms of volunteers, we're always looking for volunteers who want to give back to the community. We have volunteer opportunities every market. We have volunteer opportunities prior to the markets when we're starting to kind of promote and get the word out. And we also, as I mentioned, are an all volunteer board. And so every year we are open. When we have open spaces, we have up to nine people and we still have room I think for one or two this year. So if somebody thinks they want to, you know, really get into the planning and the supporting from a little bit higher level, we're also open there. And again, that's all on our website. We have an email.
[QjB8-1pZ1Vk_SPEAKER_08]: And then I can add really quickly one little thing for if there are any high school students who need community service hours, we welcome that as well. So there are kind of different volunteer types of possibilities for folks depending on what their interests and skills are. Agreed. They've been wonderful.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. Yeah. So all sorts of ways to get involved with the farmer's market, including coming in and buying food.
[Heather Meekergreen]: Yes. We want shoppers. That's really important. Thank you. Come and enjoy.
[QjB8-1pZ1Vk_SPEAKER_08]: A really important one.
[Heather Meekergreen]: And what's fun is talking with vendors.
[QjB8-1pZ1Vk_SPEAKER_08]: A lot of the folks who are there are the owner of the business, right? So for Deerhorn Farm, that is the farmer that you're talking to, like he is the guy, he is the one who does the work. And same with lots of other of our businesses, where the owner is the person there, not all of them, there's others that hire staff and that works great.
[Heather Meekergreen]: So I want to add other ways I realized we didn't mention about getting involved I alluded to one so musicians are performers, they don't have to be musicians, they could be spoken word they could be poets, they could be, I don't know improv will take anything we're interested in diversifying representing performance, but there's also a form and a link to sign up and say, hey, I have an hour. I'd love to, you know, come and we have a small stipend to offset your time. And then secondly, community organizations. If you are a nonprofit and you want to have an information table and get, you know, reach the community. I think our foot traffic is up to six or 700 people a week or something like that. And we're growing and growing and growing. come by and we can find you an opportunity to come and be at one of the markets. Many, many ways. Come, join us.
[Danielle Balocca]: I've been to a couple. I'm excited to start going again in the summer. Is there anything else that I haven't asked that you would like to make sure we talk about?
[Heather Meekergreen]: Goodness. I guess I'm curious, when you came to the market, what did you enjoy about it? I have a different hat on all the time now.
[Danielle Balocca]: You're putting me on the spot, but that's good. I really like the location. Once my kids stopped trying to run into the street all the time, it was fun. And I anything that's like connecting to the community, I would agree like I really enjoy. And I like that it's like right by the river and it's it's nice. And for folks who don't drive, I think it's really accessible for riding your bike or walking from the square. Yeah, I'm having a hard time remembering any of the particular like vendors, but it's been a while. But just the vibe. I love the vibe of farmers markets.
[Heather Meekergreen]: Good. Great. Well, we're doing something right then. Thank you.
[QjB8-1pZ1Vk_SPEAKER_08]: And I would say for folks, just if folks want to kind of hear more or to be in the loop, I think that. So we are on social media and I'll get you that information for the show notes. But also through our website people can sign up for the newsletter that that I spend a fair amount of time on each week. And we actually have a lot of readers so it's great, but it in that we kind of specify who is coming that week what performers to expect all those kinds of details because they're, it is different every single week. And so that way, you know, if someone wants to bring their knives in to get sharpened, like they know whether or not the knife sharpener will be there. Because, you know, it gets awkward walking around with a big bag full of knives if it's not there. It's happened. So the newsletter is just a solid source of information for really knowing the details of the event.
[Heather Meekergreen]: Yeah, and you can reach us all the time at medfordfarmersmarketatgmail.com. It's very simple, so yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I'll be sure to put that in our show notes. Perfect, yes. Well, thank you both for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time, and I can't wait to get to the next Farmers Market.
[Heather Meekergreen]: Wonderful. Well, team nine, join us. Thanks so much for having us. Thank you very much.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks so much to Jane and Heather. Thank you for listening to today's episode, and as always, if you have feedback about this episode or ideas for future episodes, you can email medfordpod at gmail.com. You can also subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Medford Bites!