‘Grow it local and get it local’ unofficial theme of area farmers markets

story and photos by Marla Cantrell
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At the Alma’s farmers’ market on Saturday (May 22) only Delilah Atha and her two children, 7-year-old Colton and 5-year-old Sydney, showed up as vendors at the Fayetteville Avenue location.

They sat at a card table covered with cartons of range free eggs. There was not a lot to do. The three turned their heads as a low-rider scraped across the nearby railroad tracks, then eased past the downtown market. The driver didn’t stop. Not many people had.

“It’s after nine and we’ve made one sale,” Atha said.

Atha, whose family has two farms — one in Alma and a larger one in Ozark — believes farmers markets are important. They support local farmers, reduce the dreaded carbon footprint and typically use little or no pesticides on the produce they sell.

“It’s good to know where your food comes from,” Atha said, turning to her son Colton.

“Who lays the green eggs?” she asked.

“The egg layers,” Colton said, as if this is the obvious answer.

“No, it’s the Araucanas, remember?” Atha countered, as patient as a schoolteacher.

The lessons are paying off.

“My neighbor Henry thinks some of the hens are roosters,” Colton said. “He can’t tell the difference.”

“We try to raise all our own food,” Atha said. “We’re not always successful. We butcher a calf every year. We have orchards. We raise all our vegetables, and blueberries, raspberries and grapes.”

The Alma farmers market is open every Saturday morning and runs until noon.

Less than 10 miles away, at Van Buren’s farmers’ market, Darrell Newton is selling baskets of flowers, greenhouse tomatoes, green onions, broccoli, Gerber daisies, new potatoes. Even though it’s fairly quiet on the downtown parking at Eighth Street and Webster, he believes this spot will someday be the place to come on Saturday mornings from 7 a.m. until noon.

“I started in Fort Smith in ’01. It looked just like this,” Newton said, pointing to the only other vendor on the lot. ”There were four of us who sat over there every Saturday for four years and now it’s a boom over there (in Fort Smith). You get discouraged some days, but if you stay with it, it will come.”

He’s right about the Fort Smith market, which is open every Tuesday and Saturday from 7 a.m. until noon. Twenty-six vendors have set up in make-shift shops at North Second Street and Garrison Avenue, selling honey, fruits and vegetables, flowers and trees. A Blues band is playing underneath a white canopy. There is even a spot dedicated to homemade laundry detergent. The best selling item today is the Monkey Fart detergent.

“We’re moms of teenage sons. We’re used to stains and odors,” co-owner Colleen Walden said. ”We started Old Fashioned Clean laundry products because Cindy Taylor and I both got laid off last year. Instead of just sitting around, we decided to start a business. I’m a petroleum landman and Cindy’s  an accountant.”

The Fort Smith women are both working again but they keep this venture going by working nights and weekends. Walden and Taylor found recipes online and experimented. Once the product was perfected, they started handing out samples at last year’s farmers market. They soon had return customers.

“It’s like half the cost of commercial brands,” Taylor said. “The ingredients are very pure and it cleans very well.”

A band plays while customers roam the booths, smelling the garlic, picking up orange-red tomatoes, dodging a Chocolate Lab puppy on a blue leash.

Even the western re-enactors, “Lawbreakers and Peacemakers,” have shown up. They walk in a pack through the aisles of produce, the silver of their guns and badges catching the morning light.

When the band stops, a scuffle starts up and soon there’s gunfire. One of the lawbreakers falls dead near a bucket of bamboo walking sticks. Justice is fast in the town once known for its Hell on the Border.

“We usually have some of our Belle Starr type ladies show up,” Peacemaker Bob Newbold said. “But they wear all those big hoop things and it’s supposed to get to 90 degrees today. And they didn’t have much notice this time, so we’re on our own.”

Fort Smith has decoded what it takes to make a farmers’ market work. It’s equal parts entertainment, a movement toward green living, and fresh products not available anywhere else.

Van Buren’s Darrell Newton thinks there’s one other part to that recipe: Getting the word out. So while he sits on a mostly empty parking lot hoping for business, he sends his son seven miles southwest to downtown Fort Smith.

“There’s enough business for all our communities,” Newton said. “And that’s really the point of the farmers markets. Grow it local and get it local. We’re here waiting for people to realize that.”