Welcome on a Wednesday
“Have you ever tried a pawpaw?”
Krista Arthur hands over a thumb-sized fruit to a willing student who has stepped under her pop-up tent to escape the last rays of hot summer sun. Krista, co-owner of Little Miami Farms in Xenia, Ohio, arrives on campus each Wednesday afternoon during fall semester as a vendor for the Flyers Farmers Market. Her season starts off crisp, with bell peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers, before succumbing to the pleasures of fall, including butternut squash and pumpkins.
Students, faculty and staff enjoy shopping at the market. The pawpaws — the fruit of a native woodland tree with the flavor of a mango — are a gift. Krista hands me a few. I also pick up an overstuffed bag of cucumbers, some of which I offer a student. He eagerly
replies,
“I live with six guys; we can eat as many as you have to give.”
Unless you graduated in the last three years, this farmers market may not sound familiar to you. The Brook Center on campus started it as a way for students to have easy access to fresh food — and a bit of fun. Vendors set up along the Central Mall between Kennedy Union and Alumni Hall. Krista is a regular, this year also bringing succulent plants for students to beautify their rooms. There are vendors selling bread and baked sweets. There are also vendors with gifts, such as fair-trade handwoven baskets. During a busy class change, the farmers market can have the energy of a fair, complete with the man under an umbrella selling snow cones. (Full disclosure: My husband is a vendor, selling fresh-roasted coffee beans and coffee drinks.)
I beg your pardon for a momentary tangent: A big thanks to all our readers who filled out the magazine’s most recent reader survey; we’ll have full results for you in the winter issue. One answer we know remains constant from year to year: What readers most want to read is whether their UD experience is the same or different from the experience of today’s students.
Pawpaws are different. And so are mid-week snow cones, fresh lemonade, tomatoes and iced lattes.
A few weekends ago, I chatted with an alumnus while we listened to the local high school band play in a city park. When I mentioned the farmers markets, his reply was, “They never had anything like that when I was a student.” He pulled out a story about how his student ID doubled as a meal ticket — and his only choices were chicken or beef.
Definitely no pawpaws.
As a staff person and alumna, I appreciate the farmers markets. Offering local fare further connects students with the community around them, while also giving them healthy options to nourish their bodies. They learn about Krista’s family farm and its dedication to sustainable practices and heirloom varieties. And they may even try something unexpected and wonderful, and be back for more — a diversion more than welcome on a Wednesday.