Learning New Things at the Farmer's Market

Growing up in a small town in Connecticut, I always knew that Farmer's Markets were the best place to find fresh produce, but the thought of visiting one never crossed my mind.  I never felt the need to go to a place where I believed they only sold fruits and vegetables.  As it turns out, the Farmer's Market is much more than that, and it is also quite interesting.  On December 6, I learned what a Farmer's Market actually looked like and saw the setups that people had in the Pawtucket Wintertime Farmer's Market.  

It was my first experience at a Farmer's Market, and being that it was a rainy day and we had to leave at 9:00 AM on a cold Saturday morning, I was not ready for what I envisioned the Farmer's Market to be like. However, once I was there, I was intrigued and learned a lot about the places there. 

I also learned a little bit about how the Farmer's Market works as well.  The vendors have a six month contract with the Farmer's Market, and most of them are repeat vendors. Thinking that there would be a lot of competition in such a small area, I asked if there are people here early to get prime locations or if there's ever any fighting among vendors.  To my surprise, most vendors rush in at the last minute before the market opens, not worrying much about where they are set up.  The vendors are also very friendly to each other and their customers, as they all respect the amount of work and effort that it takes to be in the farming industry.  They support each other and are even willing to occasionally help each other out.  This surprised me a little bit because they're all competitors, but at the same time it didn't based on how nice and friendly all of them were.

Seven Stars Bakery

Seven Stars Bakery is a local bakery in Rhode Island that has three restaurant-type locations.  I had visited on location once before, and due to that and the fact that it was one of the first tables, it was the first table that I stopped at.  Seven Stars has a baking facility in the building that the Farmer's Market is in, and so they take full advantage of their location by taking part.  

Seven Star's baking facility is being worked in constantly, with bread and pastries being cooked non-stop.  The reason for this is that the process to cook each of their products to perfection requires a lot of time to prepare it.  They use a unique process of long-fermentation, keeping their bread and pastries softer and more fresh for a longer period of time than competitors who produce bread quickly by shortening the fermentation process.  

Not only does Seven Stars produce quality food, but they are also focused on the community and are also focusing on becoming more environmentally friendly.  Seven Stars purchases all of their ingredients from suppliers that are as local as possible, and they rarely use suppliers that are further than Massachusetts and Connecticut.  While Seven Stars does not have set suppliers, they have a network, as they need to have a backup should a supplier be unable to deliver.  

Seven Stars also bakes more breads and pastries than they need at a given time.  This allows them to account for burnt and dropped food while not being slowed down in the process.  For all of the food that is dropped and is not any good, Seven Stars will compost it and has arrangements with a local farm to sell or trade it.  The leftover food that is still fresh gets donated to people who are struggling to provide food for themselves.  They do this to be interactive in their community as well as be environmentally friendly.  Another environmentally friendly step that they have taken is that all of the paper that they use (napkins, paper plates, etc.) are all recycled paper.  They told me that they are making an effort to become even more sustainable and environmentally friendly in the next couple of years, but it's a long and expensive process, especially considering that they do not own some of their properties but they rent them instead, meaning that they wouldn't need permission to make any large improvements to the property.

Apponagansett Farm

Apponagansett Farm is a small family farm in South Dartmouth, MA. The products that they sell are all produced with an emphasis on quality, and they also have sustainability initiatives that are in place that they use in growing their products.  The part that interested me the most was that they do not use many of the chemicals, fertilizers, and other harmful products to help produce their food.  In addition, they also feed their hens GMO-free grain so that they produce an egg with no added chemicals to it.

When we were talking about their chemical-free practices, I asked them what would happen if any of their crops failed during the season.  The first part of the response was that they grow a wide variety of crops in order to avoid any crop-failing related problems.  This way if one crop fails, there are other crops to be sold so that they don't take a loss from it.  In addition, they are part of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), which provides them a community to trade, buy, and sell products from other farms as well as sell products the the community in a certain group.  This helps them because they can work with other farms when a crop fails so that they help each other out.     

Having a supply chain concentration, it was interesting to me to see where Apponagansett Farm fell on it.  They are the producer of their own products, but they also sell their products as well.  This makes them a large part of their own supply chain without having many other players involved. The largest outside influence on their supply chain is for the equipment and the local natural food stores that sell their products. With controlling the supply chain, they are able to keep sustainability as a main goal throughout the process.  This also allows them to keep their customers informed about how their products are grown with sustainability practices and chemically free.  

Ava Anderson

As a group, a few classmates, our professors, and I stopped into a store that is in the same building as the Farmer's Market, though it is not technically a registered vendor.  We stopped at Ava Anderson, the only brand of non-toxic and organic skin care products in the United States.  Here I learned that there are only 10 banned chemicals in the United States versus 1300 in Europe.  This is an astonishing fact that makes me question how much toxins are in other products that I use daily.  The other part that I found interesting is that when "fragrance" is listed as an ingredient in a product, there are usually dangerous chemicals that do not have to be listed because of the inclusion of "fragrance" in the ingredients, which also makes me question the many products that I use.  There are also no filters to filter out toxins in our body when going from the skin into our bloodstream; the only filtration is when we ingest something.  

Learning all of this, I was intrigued as to how the business started.  Ava was only 15 years old when the company started, and it has boomed ever since.  Being the only non-toxic and organic brand in the US market, it has given her an advantage of less competition on the same level.  She also has the support of her friends and family; she credits this support as being what helped her get everything from an idea to a product.  It is a very interesting company and I learned a lot of interesting thing about skin care that I had never known before.

--Daniel DiNicola

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