Local farmers market offer organic produce

Upcoming dates for the North San Juan Organic Farmer's Market:
May 3
May 17
May 31

SAN JUAN - Eager shoppers thronged the sidewalks at a local park Saturday morning long before the organic farmers market there even opened.

Customers even went so far as to help local backyard organic farmers set up the North San Juan Organic Farmer's Market in prepara-tion for the 9 a.m. opening. Within an hour after business got under way, the tables emptied and families scurried home to harvest more produce, said Janie Perales, one of the market's organizers.

At the North San Juan Park, 509 E. Earling Road, long hours toiling in backyard gardens paid off for some local families as their pro-duce sold quickly.

Sacinicte Mata, 26, bagged radishes and cabbage heads for late-comers just before noon. Mata helps her father grow the produce in a small garden at his Edinburg home, she said.

"We just make some small plants," she said.

For Mata and some 15 families who participate in Familias Productores del Valle, a farming cooperative, this is their first season harvesting for market. They're students in an introductory class put on by a local horticulturalist who designed the manicured gar-dens of this San Juan park.

Barbara Storz, a Texas AgriLife Extension Service horticulture agent in Hidalgo County and columnist for The Monitor, teaches low-income families from area colonias how to cultivate their own backyard vegetable gardens as part of an outreach project called Grow'n Growers.

The classes were funded by a grant from the Heifer International Foundation, a nonprofit based in Little Rock, Ark., that is dedicated to curbing hunger and poverty by promoting self-reliance and sustainability. Storz teaches the class in an area of the park the city made available for the project.

Her aim was to create a farmers market by teaching low-income families how to grow produce. The families in turn would benefit from the money made by selling their produce at the market.

The commercial farming industry is so well established in the area that persuading a large farmer to set aside produce for a small farmers market was unrealistic, Storz said.

"The only way to have a farmers market is to grow the farmers," she said. "It needed to be people who probably could use the money."

While Storz assures that the produce is grown according to strict organic farming methods, the produce is not certified organic. That's because her grant money and the resources of the families aren't enough to cover the cost of certifying a small-scale farming operation.

But few appeared to care Saturday as customers inquired about Mata's farming methods and contemplated buying a surprising discovery: celery.

"It's hard to find celery in an organic market," she said with pride.
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Sean Gaffney covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4434.