SALEM, Ohio — It all started with flowers and a farmers market. Only that farmers market was an hour and a half northwest of Salem, outside of Cleveland.
When Melissa Thompson moved to Salem, roughly 10 years ago, she made the long trek to her hometown to sell her flowers every weekend. Harvesting started on Thursday. Then, she loaded her flowers and went to market. She was selling out every weekend, but something didn’t feel quite right.
Thompson couldn’t shake the feeling that she should be selling her flowers in her own community, and she longed for a reliable farmers market closer to home. Her mindset changed, while she was out there selling, and she hasn’t looked back.
“I made a choice that I was only going to support local,” Thompson said. “I made a conscious decision that I wasn’t going to sell there anymore and I was going to pour into my own community. That’s really how this whole thing came about.”
About three years ago, Thompson found a local florist in Salem to purchase her flowers. While she was grateful to sell her flowers at A Touch of Gracious Living, she continued to dream of a farmers market for her community like the one she had known.
“This community needs the big farmers market where the vibe on Saturday morning is everybody’s getting drawn out,” Thompson said. “There’s this happy feeling where you know who you’re buying from and you go to see them every weekend. I want it to be a staple in our community. I want it to be a reliable staple of fresh foods and heritage crafts.”
As it turns out, starting a farmers market doesn’t happen overnight. It requires a lot of work and it takes time, commitment and a lot of promotion. So the community garden came first.
Garden
The community garden appeared about a month ago, in a previously vacant lot, on the corner of South Lincoln Avenue and Columbia Street, across the street from Gilbert’s Auto Service LLC. It features a variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs still in the beginning stages of growth. Best of all it’s an educational garden, open to the public from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day.
“It’s not even about the gardening, as much as it looks like it’s about the gardening. It’s about community service,” Thompson said.
Ollas
This month, community members are welcome to stop by and learn about ollas — an irrigation technique that originated in China and North Africa more than 4,000 years ago. On the surface, ollas are simply terra-cotta pots filled with water and set into the soil. Below the surface, they ensure the garden is consistently moist as the water inside slowly leeches into the soil through tiny pours in the clay.
The ollas have been vital to keeping the garden healthy during the recent drought. There’s no water source at the garden, so Thompson uses a large backpack sprayer to water the plants every morning, and she fills the ollas. Anyone who would like to visit the garden is welcome to help keep the ollas filled.
Thompson’s vision for the classroom environment she’s cultivating in the community garden is to connect the community with potential vendors for the farmers market she hopes to have up and running by next summer.
“It’s a place to host educational experiences and help feed into the market,” Thompson said. “I’m trying to create that vibe that they’re (the vendors are) loved and wanted here so that they want to come sell here.”
Anyone interested in the continued educational efforts at the community garden can stay up to date on events by subscribing to the Salem Farm Market newsletter at https://www.salemfarmmarket.org/subscribe.
Salem Farm Market
The community garden is sponsored by the Salem Farm Market, which is expected to be open every Saturday next year, June through September from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Broadway Avenue between State Street and East Pershing Street.
However, the Salem Farm Market is a much bigger undertaking that has a lot of pieces Thompson is still working into place.
This summer Thompson’s focus is filling the calendar of events in the community garden, wrapping up paperwork and finding the right vendors to sell food and heritage crafts at the farmers market next summer. Every weekend, Thompson and her family have been attending other successful farmers markets, collecting business cards and making connections.
“We’re going out there and we’re buying from people we would want at our market. We’re establishing these relationships. Then we invite them into the garden to see if they want to teach a class here. It’s all about building relationships right now,” Thompson said.
The Salem Farm Market has already received interest from a handful of vendors, selling products that include microgreens, mushrooms, flowers and jewelry. Additional information and a downloadable application for vendors who may be interested in becoming part of the Salem Farm Market in 2024 are available at salemfarmmarket.org/for-vendors.
By winter, Thompson plans to shift her focus to getting sponsors and promoting the Salem Farm Market to raise awareness within the community and surrounding areas before it opens.
Anyone interested in supporting the community garden or Salem Farm Market can visit salemfarmmarket.org/our-sponsors to learn more about sponsorship opportunities.
Until next summer, the Salem community is welcome to stop by the garden for a class, or just to help nurture it.
“I’m supporting the community right now in the only way I can. Since it’s not opening until 2024, I can feed the community and that’s like the main mission of the market. I wanna just feed into this community — good food, community relationships and sustainability, empowering our community to be healthy,” Thompson said.
