It’s not everyday that you can say that your work and your personal life completely converge, but yesterday that happened for me when the 5 Points Market was launched at the Museum Center at 5ive Points here in Cleveland, TN.
It’s also not often that a history museum gets to be the site of a farmers market. But thanks to our great downtown location and the fact that we work hand-in-hand with our Main Street towards downtown revitalization, we were happy to offer our site when Main Street requested it.
At 3:00 p.m. the farmers and crafters started rolling in to set up their booths in our parking lot and in our back lawn area. For our first-time event, the farmers market had a great selection of vendors come to sell.
Among the things I could buy were:
- Vegetables (many of them organic)
- Grass-fed beef from two local vendors
- Fruits
- Locally made crafts
- Beautiful cut flowers.
Shopping at the Greenway Table booth
The Greenway Table was there. I’m very excited about this The Greenway Table, which was started by an energetic young woman named Jennifer Norton. Jennifer’s goal is to teach about sustainable agriculture and to use the organization’s produce to help feed those in need in Cleveland and to sell the remainder at Farmers Markets. She’s off to a great start, and I purchased quite a few veggies from them!
The Lavendar Kitty
One of the craft vendors I purchased from was Kathy’s The Lavender Kitty. Kathy is a museum board member, my good friend, and the wonderful real estate agent who sold Dan and me our house. She grows lavender on her property and makes wonderful bath products with it. I purchased lavender hand scrub and bath tea, as well as delicious lavender cookies and refreshing lavender lemonade. Yum! All lovingly made by this talented woman.
Barbara Krasman - that umbrella will come in handy later!
Although I didn’t buy anything from Barbara Krasman, I do want to mention her. She is one of the vendors whose lovely line of handmade jewelry we carry in the Museum Store . I’ve written about our incredible store before, but it bears repeating. Everything in it is handmade by local crafters and artists who live within a 200-mile-radius of Cleveland. We think we are the only Musmum store in the country that has this model for selling and it’s a great one. We support local artists, rather than mass-produced items from China. Isn’t this what museum stores should be about?
Something to cool you down
We had two food vendors – the flavored ice couple Daily’s Delights and the Hot Dog Man who can always be found down at the Courthouse Square.
Clover Wreath Farm selling organic and heirloom veggies!
One of my most exciting finds was Clover Wreath Farm, a sustainable organic CSA farm right here in Cleveland and not too far from our house! Who knew!
I purchased some heirloom tomatoes and squash from the owner, who is pictured here, but really didn’t speak much to her. Tonight I checked out their very cool website, which has great links and lots of helpful information about why you want to eat organic, eat grass fed meat, shop local, etc. All very helpful to me right now, which I’ll explain in a minute.
My final purchase was from Humberd Beef. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of Kelly Humberd, one of the owners, but I’m glad we found her. She and her family are just starting to raise grass-fed beef on their family farm. They process the meat at R & D Custom Slaughtering in Dunlap, TN. Neither Dan nor I eat red meat except for hamburger meat. We mainly eat chicken and fish. But, after last night, I’m completely changing my eating habits.
I’m reading Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the all-American Meal by Eric Scholsser. The book came out in 2001 and was followed by a movie in 2006. Dan gave up fast food quite a while ago and I gave it up again in January for our unchained experiment. We did it mainly with the intent of not supporting businesses outside of our community. When you eat in a fast food restaurant, much of what you spend goes to corporate headquarters far away from your town, whereas if you eat in a locally-owned restaurant, the majority of your money stays local.
But after reading the chapters entitled “The Most Dangerous Job” and “What’s In Your Meat,” I will never buy or eat red meat that is not grass-fed and locally produced again. For those of you who purchase your red meat at the grocery store, not only is it filled with – sorry if this offends anyone – animal shit (which is why E Coli is continually breaking out), but the slaughter houses are horrible places for the people who work these low paying and incredibly dangerous jobs.
Thanks to the fast food industry, the big industrial slaughter houses in the rural Midwest are churning out processed beef as fast as they can so that our health is being jeapordized with the meat and the health and well-being of the people who are forced to work these wretched jobs areis being ruined. If you don’t have time to read the book, at least read through the link that summarized the book above.
You can choose to ignore this information as well, like my co-workers who “didn’t want to hear about it.” But making informed food choices about what goes into your body seems more and more important these days when chemicals, hormones, and God only knows what else are being dumped into our food supply. I want to know — and need to know — what I’m eating. Thanks to my unchained way of life, I’ll be making better decisions that will help not only me, but my community and the planet.
So, thanks Main Street for coming up with the idea of the 5 Points Market!
Please let me know if you have local farmers markets or local meat suppliers you’d like to tell us about! We want to share the information with our readers.
Tags: farmers markets, food, Museum Center at 5ive Points, shopping
I don’t know about locally own or fed emeat. I do know thbat there is a Farmer’s Market once a week. We’re usually at work when they have it. It would be nice to have it in the evening so some of the rest us could go.