Chicago’s Green City Market is known as one of the nation’s premier farmers market. The Market’s big annual public celebration is its Chef BBQ, which is coming up next week on Thursday, July 21. The event is kind of a foodie fantasy camp, but there is also an important social mission. Green City Market executive director Melissa Flynn discusses in the latest installment of our “Farm to Table: Keeping It Real” series.
Urban agriculture in on the rise, in many cases providing jobs, opportunities and access to Good Food for residents of underserved communities. But the farm Jen Rosenthal manages on Chicago’s South Side has particular social significance: It is on a site once occupied by apartment towers of The Robert Taylor Homes, which had grown so troubled-plagued that its residents were relocated and the buildings torn down.
Sourcing locally is a commitment that is both rewarding and frustrating for a chef. But metro Chicago’s White Oak Gourmet
is committed, even if it means chasing chickens (okay, chicken delivery trucks) around the city. Read Chef Tom Leavitt’s reflections on building relationships with farmers in this contributed column.
Frontera Farmer Foundation is a Chicago-based nonprofit that reflects the commitment of Chef Rick Bayless and his Frontera restaurant group to help local and regional farmers build their businesses and succeed. The foundation presents the lineup of its 2016 grant recipients, and we are very pleased to see many friends and associates of FamilyFarmed.
FamilyFarmed’s 12th annual Good Food Festival & Conference is scheduled for March 24-26 at Chicago’s UIC Forum, and exhibitor registration is open. Robin Schirmer, project coordinator for the Chicagoland coalition of CSA farms, shares her experience working with and attending the event.
Chicago nonprofit FamilyFarmed will greatly expand its efforts to train farmers across the United States through cooperative agreements with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and a partnership with Whole Foods Market. These developments also sync up with FamilyFarmed’s own new Direct Market Success program — aimed at “growing young farmers” — supported by an IndieGoGo crowd-funding campaign.
FamilyFarmed has launched a fundraising campaign — titled “Help Us Grow Young Farmers!” — to support the latest expansion of its extensive efforts to train farmers across the United States so they can achieve sustainable success. The campaign, staged on the IndieGoGo crowd-funding site, is titled “Help Us Grow Young Farmers!”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture kicked off the 16th annual Farmers Market Week Sunday, announcing a 64 percent increase in customer traffic in markets open for at least two years.
There are so many reasons to go out with your shopping bags during National Farmers Market Week and celebrate the rapid rise in the number of farmers markets across the nation. One of them may surprise you.
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” says the longtime motto of the U.S. Postal Service. If Thursday evening’s annual Chef BBQ staged by Chicago’s Green City Market is an indication, that applies as well to connoisseurs — at least as when it comes to rain.
Chicago is one of the nation’s top cities for great food and drink. Each year folks here are presented with an array of big tasting events to choose among. But there are both good food and Good Food reasons why hundreds of people choose to attend the annual Chef BBQ event at Green City Market in Lincoln Park.
Good Food on Every Table recently invited readers across the country to share their stories about the Good Food scene in their hometowns. We want to thank Patty Rubeck of DeKalb, Illinois — founder of “Eat Local DeKalb” — for being the first to accept the invitation.
The Good Food movement is playing a major role in Detroit’s rising reputation as a “comeback city.” Eastern Market, one of Detroit’s oldest and most historic institutions, is at the core of these efforts to build a thriving local food system, and it recently opened a community kitchen to provide resources for food entrepreneurs.
You would be hard-pressed to find a business that is more local, more community-based, and more dedicated to revitalizing economically challenged neighborhoods than Chicago’s Urban Canopy.
The Band of Farmers Talent and Fashion Show takes place at The Hideout in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago tomorrow (Saturday, March 28). This show is the most fun a farmer (and a fan of farmers) can have without playing in the dirt.
by Pat Stieren, guest contributor Pat Stieren is executive director of the Illinois Farmers Market Association (IFMA), which is presenting a conference on Saturday, March 21 at the UIC Forum on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus. The event coincides with FamilyFarmed‘s Good Food Festival at the same location. To purchase tickets to attend the Read more about First Person: How Farmers Markets Help Producers Scale Up for Success[…]
by Julia McDonald, guest contributor Julia McDonald and her husband Todd McDonald own Peasants’ Plot, a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm in Manteno, Illinois that grows produce sustainably and sells it to subscribing consumers. In her contributed column, McDonald describes the rise of the CSA concept and its still yet-to-be-tapped potential; the emergence of the Read more about First Person: CSA Farmers Band Together[…]