table talk / By Bob Doran

Farmers’ Market Turns 30

How did it all start? A bit of history.

(Sept. 25, 2008)  It doesn’t look like there will be much to mark the occasion, just some giveaway raffles and some special activities for kids, but this Saturday the North Coast Growers Association celebrates the 30th anniversary of Humboldt County’s Farmers’ Market.

A couple of weekends ago, as I made my way from stall to stall on the Arcata Plaza shopping and visiting, I asked a couple of farmers, “Who was around at the start?”

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I’d guessed that Marguerite Pierce of Pierce Family Farms was among the first. No, she told me. She’d come in a few years after the beginning. She suggested I check in with Denis Potter. “And you should definitely talk to Marilyn of Seaside Herbs. You know she started the whole thing.”

Marilyn Kelly’s Seaside Herbs stall was right next to the table Denis had set up in front of his truck selling the last of Potter’s Produce for this season. While Kelly retains the name of her former cut herb business, nowadays she just sells potted plants, in part to make a little extra money, but mainly because she enjoys being part of the market atmosphere.

How did it all start? The short answer: Grant funding was used to fill a community need. Of course there was more to it than that.

As Kelly recalls it, the original federally funded community nutrition grant that led to the market was written by Pam Kambur, as part of her job working for something called the Redwood Community Development Council (RCDC), part of the now-defunct Center for Community Development. John Woolley, Humboldt County’s outgoing Third District Supervisor, was executive director of RCDC at the time.

“We had some good connections with the White House during the Carter days,” said Woolley. “That allowed us to get administrative support for some of our creative proposals through the Dept. of Labor.” Along with looking at new avenues for local agriculture, RCDC was helping with small business development and training for timber industry workers displaced by the expansion of Redwood National Park.

“The main focus of the [community nutrition] grant was a feasibility study on creating a community cannery,” said Kelly. (She did not think anything came out of the cannery proposal.) “Then there was nutrition outreach and agricultural outreach. I was the agricultural outreach person.”

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