Save Ashburn Farmers’ Market

VENDOR BENDER Lona Lane is using her powers of persuasion to fill this parking lot with farmers.

Keep this photographer working: Joe Wigdahl joewigdahl.com

Green City Market has 60 vendors. The Ashburn Farmers’ Market has one. In its heyday—when it started in 2000—it had “at least five,” according to Ashburn’s 18th Ward Ald. Lona Lane, who created the market as executive director of the Greater Ashburn Planning Association.

But now it has only Tom Mark, who lugs what he calls “Southern crops” to Marquette Park every Sunday, in hopes that the Ashburn community makes the effort worth his while. The markets he refers to as “yuppie markets” (Daley Plaza, Division Street) are the breadwinners, the outlets for pricier produce. But in Ashburn, a predominantly African-American neighborhood, Mark knows if he wants to move produce, he needs to pack his truck with okra, greens, lima beans, green tomatoes and the like. Since the early ’90s when he began growing food specifically for farmers’ markets, he’s figured out what sells where, and the model of catering crops for specific outlets works well for him. So why is he the only farmer in Marquette Park?

“The city doesn’t have enough farmers that raise the products that sell in African-American markets,” Mark says. “And most farmers have decided: Why sell a regular tomato for a dollar a pound when they can sell heirloom for over two dollars a pound and it takes the same amount of energy to raise it?”

Lane believes her community would be willing to pay for freshness and flavor, if only residents knew about it. “You go to the store and the carrots are bagged, the cucumbers are waxy,” Lane says. “But if residents don’t know about the market, they won’t know the difference.” So she’s ramping up outreach this season to prevent the Market from resting on the back of one farmer. If Mark goes, so goes Lane’s pet project.

“I’m hoping and praying to God it doesn’t,” Lane says. And with a blessing from Father Anthony Brankin of Ashburn’s St. Thomas More scheduled for the market’s opening day, she’s looking to fast-track that prayer.

Find Tom Mark’s produce every Sunday, 7am–2pm, from June 28–October 18 at the Ashburn Farmers’ Market (Marquette Park, 67th and Kedzie Ave).

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