"THE MARKET HAS ENABLED US TO STAY ON THE FARM.
IT'S ABOUT KEEPING FARMERS ON THE FARM."

"WE WANT TO BE A GOOD NEIGHBOR TO THAT COMMUNITY"

The Nash Area Farmers Market
Nourishing a Community and a Tradition

The cultural heritage of Nash County North Carolina is steeped deep in agriculture. A leisurely drive today through the backroads of this easterly county, where the Piedmont meets the coastal plains, lays testament to this truth. For even as jobs in the agricultural industry have receded here, Nash County remains, as of the last census, among the state's top ten counties in agricultural acreage. And even as it becomes more difficult for many Nash families to make a living in farming, farming remains a way of life.

But there's more to the history of Nash County - a broader rich narrative of how folks have made their livings here. And along what county Extension director Charlie Tyson calls Rocky Mount's "main drag corridor between the old downtown and the new commercial area" you'll find vibrant evidence of that rich history. There you'll find a neighborhood, a community, and now a new community institution - founded in history and forward facing - that attest to the early identity of Nash County's largest city as both mill town and agricultural community. There along the edge of the revitalizing Rocky Mount Mill Village you'll find the Nash Area Farmers Market, thriving in its third year of operation.

"This community," Tyson says of the Mill Village, "was very encouraging and inviting and receptive to the farmers market being situated here." The Mill Village, comprised of wood-framed homes where once the workers of the Rocky Mount Mills lived and raised their families, is being reborn. Some of these homes were renovated by local churches after Hurricane Katrina to provide housing for displaced families; many of them have been very nicely restored and resold.

"We want to be a good neighbor to that community," Tyson says on behalf of the farmers market, "and stay within the context of what that community wants to be, in terms of our activities and our building design and grounds."

In fact, that effort is a pretty good living, breathing metaphor for what the Nash Area Farmers Market is striving to be. More than "just" a healthy, hearty, locally grown food source, it aims to be a community builder.

Knowing our children by name

People are coming to the Nash County Farmers Market, Charlie Tyson says, for several compelling reasons:

They're coming because they want good quality produce and baked goods. They're also coming for what Tyson calls "that farmers market experience" - strolling the rows, squeezing, thumping, assessing; absorbing with all five senses. And they're coming because they want to have, he says, "some personal interaction with the growers. They really want to have some conversation with the people they're buying their food from."

The farmers market tradition in Nash County carries back to the Great Depression, to the old Curb Market in downtown Rocky Mount. That market operated till around 1970, after which time the most ready source for locally grown produce was from farmers who would set up along the sides of the roads throughout the county.

Then in the early 1990s, a group of eight area farmers organized themselves as a nonprofit to sell their produce under tents in the parking lot of St. Paul's Methodist Church in southwest Rocky Mount. The market would set up every Saturday morning from early May to Labor Day, and folks would come in force - the demand was certainly there. But weather could dampen things and capacity was limited.

A permanent space was in order - and thus did that same group of farmers help form a core crew of dedicated individuals who set about to build such a space.

Through the assistance of Nash County, the Nash County Tourism Development Authority, the City of Rocky Mount and the North Carolina Tobacco Trust Fund Commission, this market serving not only Nash but the counties of Edgecombe, Wilson, Halifax and beyond opened in its new home in April 2005. Today it's demonstrating the profound effects a new institution founded in tradition can have on the well-being of a community.

Tim Bass was a leader among that team of growers that used to set up at St. Paul's and remains today a force behind the market's success. He agrees with Tyson's assessment of the farmers market as much more than just food source.

"Not only is it a place to buy produce," he avows, "it's a gathering place on Saturday morning. It's a place where people come to hang out and talk to their neighbors and the farmers. It's not unusual for somebody to come and spend an hour just hangin' out, talking."

Bass talks about those early days, and of his desire to carryon with the market's mission:

"We wanted to sell the produce that we raised directly to the consumer, with no buying-and-reselling allowed. We wanted to build that relationship, farmer to consumer. We know the consumer by name, the consumer knows us. We wanted a good enough relationship that they would know our children by name and they could come up and talk about what's going on in their lives.

"If you want food, you can go to any grocery store any day of the week and buy it. [At the market], we're trying to build a relationship. That's what we'd like to see continue into the future."

Growing steady

"'The first year," says Tyson, "we had about 10,000 customers; then the second year we were up over 11,000." He says that in the peak of the produce season, from June to August, "we averaged about 450 customers each Saturday in 2006, and that's up from around 370 in 2005. A total of 59 farmer-vendors participated last year, averaging 20 or so at a time.

"They pay $5 for the space for the day, which doesn't cover the bills, but the county continues to provide the operating funds for the market. The county's been very generous, assuming the leadership in providing operating funds and building maintenance."

The market now operates from early April to beyond Thanksgiving. The board is presently considering expanding hours, perhaps opening on a weekday.

Many of the farmers who come to market are former tobacco growers. For them, says Tyson, the market has been a critical resource: "This market provided an outlet to those guys to do some niche-marketing of some high-value crops."

Bass - one among those who formerly farmed tobacco - underscores the point:

"The market has enabled us to stay on the farm. It's about keeping farmers on the farm." His biggest-selling item is greenhouse tomatoes. After his family got out of the tobacco business in the mid- '90s, "we took an old tobacco greenhouse and started with greenhouse tomatoes, and then we did so well we built a new one." Bass also sells a variety of types of field produce at the market: cantaloupes, watermelons and field tomatoes.

Tyson says the biggest market sellers are strawberries, greenhouse tomatoes and cut flowers. All produce is "market certified;' meaning that the farms have been visited by the market manager. Baked-good vendors are required to receive a home kitchen inspection from the NC Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services' Food & Drug Division. According to the market's literature:

"Certification requirements impact local economic development by encouraging our farmers to diversify their crop variety and expand their harvest season. Certification also ensures that market customers will enjoy the real farmers market experience when they visit."

'Can you grow this for me?'

Not every farmer is inclined toward being a retail seller at a farmers market.

"There's a learning curve;' Tyson says. "The typical farmer is accustomed to growing things, and being very good at that, and taking those things to the market, dropping them off - they're not accustomed to marketing strategies and things like that."

But, quite often: "Once they get in this marketplace, they see things work and they see things fail, and they learn very quickly how to improve their presence there for next year. And then the second year, they get even more sophisticated. We have farmers at every level of sophistication in the market - some who have been doing it for several years and are very polished at it and some who are just learning it. It's a learning thing.

"The typical experience of a new vendor is to come to the market with some product and then quickly sell out. Then they see that the customers keep coming, so it occurs to them, 'I need to be harvesting products over a longer period of time so I can keep my presence here in the market over a longer period of time: So they begin to develop strategies for increasing their market presence."

Tyson affirms that the great majority of Nash Area Farmers Market customers are local folks. "We have a few who come in off the highway, but 90 percent of them are local people. And the vast majority of our customers come often - they may not come every Saturday, but it becomes a part of their routine to come often.

"They ask: 'Where do you grow this?' 'How do you grow this?' 'What variety are these?' They like knowing these things. And once they start developing relationships with these farmers - and they do - they begin to ask them, 'Can you grow this or that for me?' And it's a dynamic process.

Tyson calls the Nash Area Farmers Market's relationship with the Mill Village community a "synergistic thing: The market is there, and it's been another shining light in that community toward revitalization."

The same may be said of the broader goals of the market, and of the spirit in which the Tobacco Trust Fund Commission is extending financial assistance to projects such as this: The Nash Area Farmers Market is helping revitalize a rich agricultural heritage in Nash County and beyond.

- From the NC Tobacco Trust Commission - A Six-Year Retrospective

The Nash Area Farmers Market Nourishing a Community and a Tradition

The Nash Area Farmers Market
Nourishing a Community and a Tradition