A new farmer’s market has popped up this year at The Boulevard in Brentwood. You’d think we have enough face-to-face markets already, but it seems people are always happy to have more of this personal form of shopping. The monthly event (first Sunday of the month through October) is a kind of outreach program from the mothership market of them all, Tower Grove.
A visit reminded me of how special farmer’s markets are—new ones maybe even more so. They’re not only about shopping, but more about interaction. I’m quite sure no one heads to the farmer’s market saying, “I’m going to run out for a dozen eggs.” If they do, they’ll be frustrated, because nothing about a farmer’s market is fast. And for me, that’s the charm—the more chatty the vendor, the better. After all, how many other opportunities do I get to learn about, say, alpaca farms or beehives thriving in the path of Lambert Airport? Most vendors are very proud of their small-batch production, and you hardly can escape their tales of a family business that started in 1911 or a handmade food craft passed down from immigrant grandparents.
After my morning at The Boulevard farmer’s market, it also became clear that most of the vendors welcome the opportunity to sell at new venues because, well, it’s a meaningful source of income for them, especially considering their short season. One-Eye Blind Woodworks, which repurposes fallen Missouri trees, rotates from the Wildwood market to the Fenton market to Tower Grove and now The Boulevard. The retirees from Sullivan, Missouri, who run it, Dave and Jane, seem to love what they do. He makes wooden spatulas and spoons, and she repurposes feed bags into shopping totes. Every item is $10.
Then there’s Grand Army Farm in Labadie, which offers chicken, duck and quail eggs. The sign says the farm was established in 1911, and when I asked about its name, the vendor explained that it’s located on Grand Army Road, which was, I gathered, either a route for the Union army and/or a way to commemorate veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, started in 1866 in Decatur, Illinois.
In addition to fruits and vegetables, there were food trucks, tamale sellers, frozen cocktail booths (yes, at 10 a.m. on a Sunday), and Second-Hen’d, a nonprofit dedicated to saving chickens. I am not a bird person, and in fact have an irrational fear of crows, but I am sympathetic to this new and unusual animal cause. Laying hens are considered ‘spent’ after only a couple of years, and are subsequently euthanized. That seems to me a very ungrateful way to treat a living creature that gives us so much goodness. And apparently these birds are gentle and even can be therapeutic for PTSD, depression, autism and other conditions. So Second-Hen’d ‘re-homes’ them, allowing them to live a natural lifespan of up to 10 years. For a small fee, shoppers can have their photos taken with a chicken, or they can skip the feathery hug and just donate $2 to feel good about saving a life.