Farmers’ Markets
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Ahhh! The pleasures of summer —
hot days with cool nights, a full double
rainbow after an afternoon storm, peach
juice dripping down a chin.
Another pleasure of summer and into
fall is the farmers’market: rows of
booths with the growers offering the
fruits and vegetables of their labors.
The newest kid on the block is a market
of all natural and organic produce by
the Historic Downtown Littleton
Merchants’association, or HDLM pronounced
‘hoodlum,’which will be on
Nevada at Main streets.
Helen Rice, who arranged the new
farmers market for HDLM, is hoping to
create a European market day air with all
organic or natural vegetables and fruits
and very few nonfood vendors.
“We visited the farms, ate at their
tables and toured the orchards and
fields,”Rice said. “Farming is their passion,
and they go to extremes to get
their produce here.”
Many of the growers are part of the
local food movement, which advocates
locally grown produce over food shipped
or trucked in thousands of miles.
Even the five-hour one-way trek from
the Western Slope is too much for some
farmers, so they will rotate, with one
grower selling the produce of two or
three others.
Farmers’ markets are about connecting
the grower to the consumer, said
Alan Mazzotti, cofounder of Denver
Farmers Market, which has run markets
for 29 years.
“We formed this for the farmers,”
Mazzotti said. “Up until about 10 years
ago we never allowed anyone but fruit
and vegetable vendors.”
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