Farmer's Market

A farm-fresh idea

With offerings of home-baked bread and organic produce, Ruskin residents have a market to call their own.

By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 28, 2003

RUSKIN -- When Anita Jimenez moved to Ruskin from California a year ago, she assumed the farm-rich area would have an abundance of weekend farmer's markets where residents could buy the freshest locally grown produce.

Jimenez assumed wrong.

"I kept thinking, 'Where's the farmer's markets?' " recalled Jimenez, owner of the Porch Cafe & Tea Room off Shellpoint Road in Ruskin. "I mean, this is a farming community."

Now it's a farming community with a farmer's market, thanks to the persistence of Jimenez, 48, and the owners of two other local businesses.

Since November, several vendors have spent their Saturday mornings on a small lot at the southwest corner of Shellpoint Road and First Street NW. They sell tasty items ranging from chocolates and tongue-numbing salsas to organic salad greens and Plant City strawberries by the flat.

Among the vendors are two recently featured in the Brandon Times: My Mother's Garden, an organic herb and edible flower farm in Wimauma, and the Ruskin Redneck Trading Co., a producer of pickles, salsas, hot sauces and relishes made from local produce.

Jimenez teamed up with My Mother's Garden owners Kathy Oliver and Susan Bishop and Ruskin Redneck owners Anne Davis and Sandy Council.

"We just felt like there was a need for it," said Council, who owns the small lot where the market sets up shop. "This is what the public wanted. I call it, like, a little incubator, where people can try out their products."

Vendors pay $16 each week for space and can get a 10 percent discount for booking the whole month in advance.

The Ruskin market rides the wave of a national trend: markets popping up in revitalized downtowns and small cities.

From 1994 to 2002, the number of farmer's markets in the United States increased 79 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

According to the 2002 National Farmers Market Directory, there are more than 3,100 markets operating in the United States, including more than five dozen in Florida.

Just this month, Tampa's Old Hyde Park Village began hosting a market on Saturdays, and last fall, downtown St. Petersburg began hosting one.

Ruskin's fledgling market isn't as large as those in some big cities. Markets in counties such as Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Orange typically have a dozen vendors or more.

Jimenez, who sells baked breads at the market, has had trouble finding vendors, even though the county is filled with farms of all types.

Trouble is, many of the farms here -- and across the nation -- are large operations that sell strictly wholesale, to big-name buyers. They don't have the interest, or need, to sell their wares at a small open-air market one day a week, Jimenez said.

"Small farmers are dying out, and a lot of the farmers who are small can't afford the staff to send someone out on a Saturday," said Jimenez. "But we're always looking for new vendors. We'd love to get bigger."

The weather has been temperamental since the market opened in November, but Council said that hasn't kept customers away.

"We have had one good Saturday since we started," Council said. "But we have our regulars who come with their umbrellas. They fight the wind and the rain and get their bread, their produce, their sauces for the week."

On a recent overcast Saturday, Dori and Don Cohen of Tampa wandered around the booth set up by My Mother's Garden. She admired the fingerling potatoes and the shelves full of basil and mint plants.

Dori Cohen, who is a caterer, usually goes to Sarasota for such goods. Now she doesn't have to, her husband said.

"It's small, but as long as the produce is good and fresh, we like it," he said.

Ruskin Farmer's Market

WHERE: Southwest corner of Shellpoint Road and First Street NW

WHEN: Saturday mornings, beginning at 8.