Jay Dockendorf Photo
“I didn’t sign up for this,” Tyler Johnson said.
Dressed in a strawberry suit, Johnson squared off Thursday against a phalanx of 6‑year-olds armed with fresh produce.
It was second day on the job. The hour had come: Six o’clock. His boss, Erin Eisenberg, gave the order. A hailstorm of lettuce flew at Johson.
He caught one piece.
This was not a scene from the New Haven Circus Collective, but the opening day of CitySeed’s Fair Haven farmers market. The tossing of the lettuce is a longstanding Cityseed tradition when it opens the season at its neighborhood markets.
Johnson, the sacrificial strawberry, is one of Cityseed’s ten summer interns. When he is not dressed as produce, the recent high-school graduate will help Executive Director Eisenberg administer the non-profit’s five farmers’ markets across the city. The markets run until late fall.
As of today (when The Hill neighborhood’s market opens), New Haven will have access to fresh, local produce via Cityseed markets five days a week, every week, from Wednesday to Sunday.
Thursday afternoon, representatives from four local farms arrived at Front Street Park to set up their tents and tables. They sold radishes, lettuce, cherries, peaches, fava beans, collard greens and more, with some overlap. The farms numbered only four because CitySeed tries to scale its markets to demand from the local economy and Fair Haven is a low-income neighborhood, explained Rachel Berg, CitySeed market manager.
“We want to make sure the farms that come make enough money to make it worth their while,” Berg said.
The shoppers, at least, ate up the atmosphere, which included a performance by local bluesmen The Lonesome Sparrows.
Jennifer Brubacher said of herself and her friends, “We’ve been counting down the weeks for the market to start. We all hang out here.”
Bailey, a canine companion of shopper Sam Smart, received a whole zucchini (“her favorite”) for her good behavior. State representative candidate Roland Lemar was there, too, calling the preservation of farmland “vital to our future and economic health as a city and a state.”
The attending farms were Chaplin Farm, Hindinger Farm, Northfordy Farm, and Cecavelli Farm. At the close of the day, representatives from three of the four farms said they thought the showing had been “okay.” Everyone said they expected sales to pick up as the season continues.
Go Tyler, Common Ground High School class of 2010! Tyler's at CitySeed as part of the Green Jobs Corps, a youth employment and leadership development program that places our students in environmental jobs across the city. We're lucky to have CitySeed as a partner in this project. The program is funded this year by the Workforce Alliance (with federal Workforce Investment Act funding), the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the NewAlliance Foundation.