East Side - West Side, All Around the Town

A new Farmers' Market in Carbondale will launch from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday, August 2 at the historic district in downtown Carbondale in the parking lot across the street from Tres Hombres.

The effort was spearheaded by Carbondale Main Street, which in prior years had been holding Farmers Markets at the same location on Wednesday afternoons.

This year, however, the Wednesdays were not working out with low farmer participation and poor customer turnout.

In an attempt to remedy the situation, Carbondale Mainstreet has worked with several local growers to complement the Farmers' Market that has taken place on the other side of town for 30 years at Westowne Center. The growers currently slated to sell their goods are known for their solid organic growing practices: The Builas, Josh and Alexis Brown and hopefully others such as Tim Francis.

Plum Creek Orchards will also be selling local peaches (pictured above - and quite possibly blackberries and nectarines).

At this point, more growers and craftspeople are expected. So check it out if you get the chance and support those growing fresh, whole and tasty food locally.

Assess This

It's not the stuff that Hollywood movies are made of (though give me 100 million bucks and I'd make a strong case), but it is the stuff that dreams are made of - for people who like to eat anyway.

On Wednesday, July 16, a cast of more than 20 passionate characters gathered in the meeting room of the Carbondale Public Library to take a serious look at our local food system. The goal is to embark upon a Community Food Assessment (CFA), a year-long journey that will entail plenty of hard work, lots of research, serious coalition building, outreach and a host of other efforts aimed at creating a comprehensively accurate portrait of our potential to feed the people of Southern Illinois as sustainably as possible.

A solid CFA will determine the regions' assets while addressing the problems as well. We can use this information as leverage to attain grant funds; to educate the public more about the benefits of local and organic food; to find resources to help "specialty crop" growers with marketing and promotion; to help new, young farmers with training and securing loans for land; to assist lawmakers in Springfield to create policy favorable to locally-grown goods and services; and the list goes on.

So, there's plenty at stake here. As the process moves along, we will keep readers abreast of the issues that are covered and the progress that we make.

But one thing is abundantly clear already ... plenty of truly passionate and intelligent people are intent on seeing this project through.

For anyone else interested in making our local food dreams become a reality, we'd love to hear from you.