A Walk Through the Farmers Market

Sun, 12/22/2024 - 1:47pm

When: 2024

"A Walk Through the Ann Arbor Farmers Market takes a brief glimpse at the vibrant community and history of one of Michigan’s oldest markets. The farmers, artisans, and locals passing by embody the essence of Ann Arbor – a diverse gathering spot where unique voices shine through. This film showcases these stories, the history, and the people who make the market what it is." - Filmmaker Alejandro Cantu

Transcript

• [00:00:29] BRIAN CLARK: It's steady. There's just this constant flux of people coming through and sometimes just a one-off, you share a little joke with somebody that comes in. Sometimes it's the person that you know really well that comes through every week.
• [00:00:42] CAROL BROOKS: I've been here 38 years. Our big thing is eggs and blueberries. I was told I had cancer that I would make it maybe a part of a year, and yet I'm a fighter. I think that we've got it stopped, and I think we'll have control. But my son said, do you want to go to Florida? Do you want to go to California? I said I want to go to the Farmers Market. This is where my friends are.
• [00:01:15] BRIAN CLARK: There is a community feeling amongst the different vendors. We're all in this together, which is actually important. It's been really beautiful and I'm surprised how supportive of an environment it is.
• [00:01:24] STEPHANIE WILLETTE: A lot of our customers come on foot. The neighborhood is very invested, like very regular customers that have been coming with their parents both vendors and customers go back generations.
• [00:01:38] STEFANIE T. STAUFFER: For me, the best part about the Market is there's so many farms here that have been here for so long, many generations. It's really important for me to see the longevity a lot of the farms have had.
• [00:01:52] BRIAN CLARK: It's really edifying, encouraging, inspiring to see people that come to the Market and really support local food growers.
• [00:02:00] STEFANIE T. STAUFFER: The thing also, which is different about us is that we're a producer-only market, so that everybody here is either the grower or the maker. People used to camp out for their spots because it was so competitive to get in here, and this is probably 1940, so many many decades ago this happened, but that's how much people really vied to get in here. The market started in 1919.
• [00:02:40] STEPHANIE WILLETTE: It was by the courthouse, and then they moved here in the 30s.
• [00:02:42] STEFANIE T. STAUFFER: Then this roof was built as part of the WPA project during the Great Depression. We've been in this location, open every Saturday since 1930.
• [00:04:33] STEFANIE T. STAUFFER: A lot of people don't know that this is a historically Black neighborhood, so also just to honor that history of it. Coleman Jewett was a longtime vendor here. He used to sell Adirondack chairs. He has a memorial over there. He's from the neighborhood. His was a Black-owned business. He was a really important figure. Another thing we've been really focusing on since I came on in 2020 is really making sure that all of our community is represented in terms of who gets to sell here, because for a long time, it's been not that diverse in terms of who the ownership of the businesses has been. One thing we've been doing is trying to support immigrant-owned businesses as much as possible, women-owned businesses and pretty much every measure of diversity in terms of black-owned businesses that we can have and a lot of that is more like prepared foods, value-added foods, not so much agricultural because of land access struggles, but that's been something that's been really great that I've been working on a lot since I started. We want our customers to look just like the members and vice versa. A lot of times we get field trips coming through from local schools and this one day, probably a couple of months ago, one of our vendors who has snow cones. She had such an enthusiastic group.
• [00:06:23] CAROL BROOKS: Three schools came unannounced, and it was 222 children to make a snow cone for.
• [00:06:31] STEFANIE T. STAUFFER: My staff and I helped her.
• [00:06:34] CAROL BROOKS: I had help from the office.
• [00:06:36] STEFANIE T. STAUFFER: I was running ice, my other staff people were taking money.
• [00:06:38] CAROL BROOKS: They were lined up here up to the end, up there where it turns. We went in after ice about six times from the fish market. They love them, they enjoy it. I don't have many friends at home or people like that. But here you just have that good smile back and forth. That's living.