Four Mounds Welcomes Farmers' Markets 

A letter from the Executive Director, Christine Happ Olson, Four Mounds Foundation

 

When we were approached by Terry Mozena and Amy Weber last year to assist them in extending local foods to our community via the Winter Farmers Market, it was an easy decision for us. The Four Mounds estate was an experiment in sustainability when it was developed in 1908, and we've been supporting and teaching organic gardening through our youth programs and community gardens for almost two decades. What I didn't anticipate last fall was the crescendo in the national and local movements to buy and grow "local". I have recently seen a flurry of news stories reporting that sales of vegetable seeds are higher than they've been in 30 years.

 

Nationally, Michael Pollan, renowned author focusing on food and agriculture, wrote a long open letter in October to then Candidate Obama to encourage him to essentially take food seriously when he became president, suggesting programs to encourage four-season farmers' markets and creating a federal definition of “food”. He has also pleaded with the first family to plant a kitchen garden. And on the first day of spring this year, Michelle Obama broke ground on the south lawn of the White House to plant what could be called a Victory Garden, an act that hasn't been done by a first family in over sixty years.

 

Four Mounds was approached by another group this winter to support them in their effort to start a Thursday evening market this summer at Fountain Park. Some people asked, "Won’t this compete with other farmers' markets?" I say the more the merrier. Let's go back to the time of corner grocery stores like Cremers where fresh food and homemade sausage is available in walking distance of people's homes. People generally believe that multiple grocery stores operating 24/7 don't have a negative impact on a community. So let's encourage accessibility and availability of locally grown and produced foods and goods through a variety of farmers and local markets. Our goal in supporting these markets is to encourage an easy connection between community consumers and farmers.

 

At Four Mounds last spring, we turned over the old historic kitchen garden in an effort to produce food for use at our Inn & Conference Center. Even at home, my husband turned to me on a warmer day this February and declared that we were going to expand our garden this year and eat out of it all summer and fall. I believe that knowing who grows our food and how it is produced will help make our local food system more transparent. Knowledge is power, and we at Four Mounds are proud to support bringing more of that home.