Peppers available from Terhune Orchards at the Princeton Farmers Market. (Photo by Suzette J. Lucas).
By Joe Emanski and Meagan Douches
Megan McKeever stands in the middle of Albert E. Hinds Community Plaza with her hands on her hips. She’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt and a baseball cap pulled down low over her eyes. It’s 9:30 on a muggy Thursday morning and right now she is watching intently as white trucks pull one after another into parking spaces on Witherspoon Street just off the square.
McKeever is the manager of the Princeton Farmer’s Market, which takes place every Thursday from mid-May to mid-November. She has a master’s degree in public health from Hunter College, but at the moment, she’s more than anything a traffic cop. It’s not her job to set the market up, but it is her job to see that it gets set up.
There are 24 vendors who take part in the market: four farm stands plus 20 specialty stands providing everything from cheese to flowers to baked goods to crêpes made to order—and all of them need to be fully deployed in time for an 11 a.m. opening, no matter what the weather. Most of the vendors bring their wares, tables, tents, signs, equipment and staff in box trucks or vans, and those are what McKeever has her eye on most of all in the early going.
She bags the meters so that only the trucks park by them. As they arrive, she watches to make sure no one is getting in anyone else’s way. She doesn’t usually get involved in the unloading of trucks or the erection of tents, although like most people here she’s always happy to lend a hand. When vendors start scrambling, short on time, it’s often McKeever who will take their keys and move the vehicles off Witherspoon Street. Because once 11 o’clock rolls around, those trucks need to roll on—not obstruct the view of the market from the street.
Over the course of a morning, vendor staff transform an open space into a vibrant market that, for five hours each week, looks like it has always been there. And at 4 p.m. they’ll break it all down, leaving Hinds Plaza like they found it. Seven days later, most of the same people will do it all over again.
Who are these people who make it all happen week after week? Generally they’re not itinerant. For most, running a market stand is a skill they have honed over time. Some are owner-operators, like Dan Freeman of Big Bad Dad’s Jams and Estelle Orr of Happy Wanderer Bakery. Some are employees who can be found working in shops when not at the market, like Rachel Basie and Jeremiah Thurston of Jammin’ Crêpes. And some are budding entrepreneurs searching for a path to take in life, like Cherry Grove Organic Farm stand manager Ravonne Thorne.
The Echo spent the morning and afternoon of Aug. 20 in Hinds Plaza to get to know a little bit more about the people who are somehow behind the scenes and right in front of you all at the same time.
The manager
McKeever, 28, succeeded the previous market manager, Judith Robinson, who was in charge from mid-2009 until April 2014. McKeever applied for the job thinking it might make a nice capstone project for her MPH.
“My concentration was community nutrition, so I thought it would be really cool if I was able to do it,” she says, still keeping a watchful eye on everything going on around us. “I ended up interviewing and getting the job and kind of just jumped in.”
Judith Robinson remembers when the market was set up in the parking lot of Wild Oats, before she became the manager. “Jack Morrison had this idea, and he started it across from his fish shop (Nassau St. Seafood and Produce),” she said. “There were not many people and not many vendors. So they hired me to take it over, and it was moved to Hinds Plaza, which was really a great location. Though people kept telling me, ‘Thursday in the middle of the day? What are you doing?’ But I felt once people really knew about it and we were able to get all these farmers to come, it could be a success.”
Robinson put thought into the distribution of vendors. From the start, she focused on attracting food and farm goods rather than crafts, and she also looked to balance the types of vendors within those categories. Robinson, well known in the area as an advocate of healthy eating and protecting the environment, also also wanted to know how the farmers approached their work if they were going to be featured at the market.
“I went out and looked over the farms so I knew exactly how the people were producing the food. It wasn’t just ‘Give me a call, you’re in,’” she said.
Robinson said she quit as market manager last spring because after 4 and a half years she felt like the market had a sturdy foundation. “The community knew about it and loved it—all the work I had put into it was really paying off,” she said. “I felt I wanted to move on and do other things. I was really happy with the way it was.”
Taking over so close to the start of the 2014 season, McKeever’s first task was to pick up where Robinson left off. With a full complement of vendors already in place, she was able to focus on consistency and stability. As she became more comfortable in her role, McKeever began to use her public health background to start up some new community programs. In the past year she’s hooked up the market with the YMCA’s Young Chefs camp and the Princeton School Gardens’ Garden State on Your Plate Program. Some of the market vendors also provide food for Send Hunger Packing Princeton, including Terhune Orchards and Cherry Grove Organic Farm.
“We’re trying to link up with community nonprofits and organizations, trying to make ourselves more known,” she says. “Leading up to my arrival, there hasn’t been as much of a presence social media wise and working with other groups.”
McKeever grew up in Hamilton, but lives on Nassau Street today. She is an employee of JMGroup, the restaurant empire owned by Jack Morrison, who can often be seen in the plaza on market days.
The market manager job is a part-time one, requiring around 15 to 25 hours a week. McKeever says this will be her last year with the market. “I need a full-time job,” she says wistfully.
Once the market is underway, she sits at a laptop monitoring and engaging with social media. And when ominous clouds begin to appear in the west around noon, she will check the radar. “Last night they said rain around 3 or 4,” she will say, seemingly unconcerned.
The preserver
Next to the Fruitwood Farms stand, Dan Freeman of Big Bad Dad’s takes his time setting up a display of his homemade jams and jellies. The saying on his turquoise blue T-shirt is “Don’t be a schmucker.” While other vendors are setting up juicers and cooktops, Freeman arranges a sampling station. He is eager to get started and tell people about his products.
Freeman says that he developed a fondness for spicy things while eating peppers from his mother’s garden as a kid. After being laid off from a job in the food industry in 2010, he took up gardening in his Pleasantville backyard. An overflow of peppers led him to start making pepper jelly which his friends and family loved so much, they offered to buy it from him.
So Freeman decided to start his own business. One of the first things he and his wife worked on was thinking of potential names. For six weeks they ruminated over various possibilities.
Then one day, Freeman’s daughter, who was five at the time, marched in to where they were sitting and said, “Just call it Big Bad Dad’s!” And so they did.
Freeman makes all of the jams and jellies himself. He is inspired by which local ingredients are available each season. To make his “Go Blue!” jam, Freeman uses honey from fellow Princeton Farmers Market vendor Tassot Apiaries.
He enjoys experimenting with different fruit and flavor combinations, with some of the most popular being a sweet blackberry bourbon vanilla jam, a South Jersey Jam with tomatoes, peppers and garlic, and a Moroccan squash butter with a sweet and nutty curry spice flavor.
“I do flavors you will not find anywhere else,” Freeman said. “I have over 25 combinations of sweet, savory and spicy.”
The crêpiers
One of the most involved stands belongs to Jammin’ Crêpes, where the crew must set up a main tent in which they will make crêpes, a prep table behind that, and a cashier’s table in front of it with an umbrella to block out the sun. Then the real work begins.
On the menu today are four savory and four sweet crêpes, each one featuring several ingredients. The premixed batter is placed in an ice bath and the preprepped ingredients are arrayed throughout the tent. Four crêpe grills have to be assembled, connected to electricity and turned on. Immediately they begin to emit intense heat.
I notice that while it’s set to be in the high 80’s for everyone working today, Jammin’ Crêpes is the only one I’ve seen that has brought a fan. “Does the fan keep you cool?” I ask. “No,” says stand manager Rachel Basie. “It keeps us alive.”
Once the grills are hot and the mise en place in place, crêpier Jeremiah Thurston ladles out batter for a few test crêpes. The first one doesn’t come out quite right, but the second one looks perfect. Thurston has worked for Jammin’ Crêpes for almost a year. He lives in West Windsor with his wife, a student at the Princeton Theological Seminary.
When the market is in full swing, most of the stands are crowded. But Jammin’ Crêpes offers the spectacle of seeing one’s food made to order. The crêpiers pour out the batter and then smooth it with a simple implement, two wooden dowels glued together, spiraling outward until the grill is coated with batter. When one side is done they flip it over and begin building the meal. Over the course of a normal market they’ll make some 350 crêpes. At times during the day they will appear to contend with one another for ingredients, but for the most part they seem to have an understanding, even though Thurston is a fill-in today for the usual second crêpier, Annie.
Maybe it’s because she works in front of the hot grills all day, but Basie says she doesn’t mind when it rains. “It’s kind of fun,” she says. “We prepare for it, obviously. It’s kind of nice to be with a bunch of people getting soaked. Nice to have five people to go back with you to the car, all smelling like wet dogs.”
The farmer
By 10 o’clock, the Cherry Grove Organic Farm tent is almost set up, replete with the season’s best offerings, including peppers, tomatoes, beets, onions, eggplants and a dazzling array of flowers.
Everything looks amazing, but something isn’t right. A US Foods truck driver is chatting with Patty LaBella, one of the people who works at the stand. It turns out that his truck has just been sideswiped—by her colleague, Cherry Grove stand manager Ravonne Thorne, who was moving the Cherry Grove van.
Thorne appears, and exchanges some information with the driver, who moves on. As we talk, she attempts to collect herself.
She spent some of her childhood on a farm, attending a school in Oklahoma where introducing students to the environment is a focus. She graduated from Princeton University with a degree in religion and today lives in Princeton with her husband, like Thurston’s wife, a student at Princeton Theological Seminary. She has spent this year as one of six interns at Cherry Grove Farm, doing everything from planting to irrigating to harvesting.
As market manager, Thorne decides what will be brought to the market. Most of the items for sale this day were picked the day before, and she spent much of that afternoon bunching the flowers.
Thorne admits that she is not the fastest or strongest of the interns on the farm, but she is considering making farming a career. “The reason I came here is I was wondering if I want to take the plunge,” she says. “Now I know that it’s possible for me to do this. I went from being a couch potato to laboring for a whole day. I’m happy I came here.”
One of the other interns arrives at the stand with a stack of crates that had been left at the farm. Thorne and LaBella have been waiting for the crates so they can arrange the rest of the vegetables and be ready for customers to start arriving.
The beekeeper
There are already customers buzzing about when Tassot Apiaries beekeeper and apprentice Chris Bellini arrives. He darts through groups of people while carrying large boxes of beeswax candles and honey products. Once the table is set up, jars of raw, local wildflower honey are displayed atop rustic tapestries next to arrangements of handmade soaps and cosmetics.
The business has been a life-long pursuit for owner Jean-Claude Tassot, who grew up raising bees in France, Bellini says. Tassot moved to the States with his wife, Bea, 17 years ago and started the apiaries in Hunterdon County in 2000.
Bellini has also been active in agriculture all of his life with the influence of both his father and grandfather as farmers. He was led to the farm two years ago when he became interested in learning more about food sources for his horses and cattle. As he tells me all of this, he goes back and forth to help customers including a family with two excited little girls who are already biting open their honey straws.
“We keep everything as close to nature as possible. Simple is better,” he said. “Honey has local pollen in it so getting that exposure actually helps build immunity to allergens. It boosts healthy cell function and acts as an antihistamine and anti-inflammatory.”
Tassot Apiaries also provides their honey to Les Delices d’Annelise.
The baker
The words “peach sour cream streusel loaf” float out over the market. It’s past 11 a.m. now and the market is filling up with people, some of them wandering from stand to stand in a sort of indecisive daze. But phrases like that one, uttered by Happy Wanderer Bakery proprietor Estelle Orr, have a way of helping people get their bearings. “You said the four magic words,” says one customer.
Orr embodies the name of her company in more ways than one. The former Brooklyn resident moved with her husband Kevin to the Trenton area when she got a job as an operations manager for a medical device company, and in 2010 they began Happy Wanderer as a part-time venture, baking cookies, cakes and pies in a number of kitchens rather than having a facility of their own.
When in 2014 Estelle lost her job, she decided to give the gig a chance to be full time. The Orrs now run Happy Wanderer out of a kitchen in the back of the old Eddie’s Donuts on Hamilton Avenue in Trenton.
Between them, Estelle and Kevin work eight farmers’ markets a week: Robbinsville, New Brunswick, Princeton, Trenton, Hightstown, Hatboro, West Windsor and Burlington City. To keep up with demand, Estelle is in the kitchen six days a week at 7 a.m. After she works the various markets, she sometimes returns to the kitchen, working until 10.
Her peach loaves and peanut butter cookies are selling briskly as the sky turns darker and darker. She watches the clouds roll past with a wry smile.
“We live by the weather,” Orr says. “Day like yesterday, 20 percent chance—it rains. What can you do?”
The rain
When a cloudburst hits the market around noon, nobody really reacts. Even the customers in line at Jammin’ Crêpes just stand there getting wet. The heat, up to that point oppressive, lets up a bit, and everyone seems grateful for the spritz, which only lasts about three minutes.
The vendors are for the most part under tents. For them, rain is an occupational hazard. In the end it will rain off and on before finally coming down for real around three—just as McKeever had expected. With not much time left and customers thinning out, the stands start shutting down for the day. True to their word, the Jammin’ Crêpes team is able to summon smiles for a photographer.
McKeever said when it rains, she expects vendors to stay, but she also knows they have to act in their own best interest.If there’s lightning, she has to decide whether to close down or not.
“Jammin’ Crêpes has things that really can’t get wet, so they might leave earlier and then other vendors are wondering if they should go,” McKeever says. “It’s just a matter of managing and not playing favorites. It’s always hard on rainy days because you want everybody to stay.”
Web: princetonfarmersmarket.com.
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