speak on my right is lesley berger who is the director of the princeton public library and she will tell you about her interest and opening up the library to the community and farmers markets and next we have judith robinson who has an interesting career an early career as an acting in theater and these days she's become an environmental activist a lobbyist and has worked  with all of some of the environmental groups in the area and she is now manager of the princeton farmer's market and to my left is matt said s is a farmer i guess i call him the farmer but he's also doing incredible things with the greeks town quail farm so when i went to see the farmers markets the other day and i saw that there were  there and i saw that people were sitting especially at the heinz plaza princeton i thought this is more than a market this is a festival this is like an old european marketplace was that your intention is that what you had hoped to do when you started doing this yes yeah it was my intention and we you know the library has been so wonderful in partnering with my intention to make it not just a market but an activist energy for food for fresh food and to support the farmers in new jersey because they you know as the land people think there's not a lot of land laughter a lot of farming in new jersey but as i've gone around i found so many wonderful small farmers and they're so enthusiastic about their work so the market is yes it's it's beyond just a market it's a spirit and we're collaborating in workshops i'm doing workshops at the library and fresh food and water and they're innovating all kinds of other wonderful things so so our concept was that this would kind of mimic the best of what goes on in many european cities and once a week every day where you can pretty much find a street market and we have this wonderful opportunity because  pines plaza being kind of a gathering place and princeton to bring the market there because we knew people were congregating here already whether it was just coming to sit there and have their lunch or to read a book or to meet a friend for coffee so we had that wonderful synergy of having a place where people were already gathering and i think what we've been able to do is really kind of capture that energy and to make thursday in princeton which is the day that we have our farmer's market really be a day of celebration of food of farming of wholesome food and of community which i think is really what what so much of a farmer's market is all about you know and the music wise to actually celebrate you know that kind of spirit so i get musicians to play every week and have a guest organizations that are either connected with true or environmental issues or social you know connection now that there's an idea right and it's also taken inside the library because yesterday i went to the food the chefs from a new terror was doing marvelous food demonstrations you sort of brought if not only outside the library but inside the library and and i kind of reinforces you know some might be asking at this point what does the library have to do with the farmer's market we see it as kind of a logical extension of what we do in the sense that we're about bringing community together about community building and we're about helping people learn in many different ways so  it's not just about reading a book for watching a movie but sometimes people learn best when they can learn from each other and when they can hear a farmer talk about what it's like to bring food from from the field to the table or to hear a chef talk about what he's bought in the market that week and to turn that into a wonderful meal so we think there's just don't wonderful synergy between having the library be part of this and the other day and it reminded me when i was in romania with my cousin a few years back we went to farmers markets and the farmers went there they had the most incredible produce you can imagine huge ripe tomatoes i travelled on a train looked out the window saw nothing but farmland and the only living people out there were three people working the farm and maybe a man maybe a woman and a horse and a plow no machinery and it was amazing and then the farmers markets the beautiful wonderful produce so i took a lot of pictures there so it made me the highlights possible and this makes me think a little bit of that european market could but tell  markets all with new jersey and in the philadelphia one of the main reasons why we do farmer's markets is to bring up our products such sort of make it more convenient for people our farm is sort of a destination location it's a little bit off the beaten track north of princeton so by bringing the product to the markets we have the sell more product and get our name out there a little bit more markets days and other days you don't we've been preparing all week for the markets already and tomorrow in my range so we might lose three markets tomorrow and we already have all the product prepared everything is ready to go and so it is it is tough on a farmer standpoint to do the markets but it also is rewarding because you get to interact with customers  lot of the customers that we have met at the market you see every year i've been doing person i do a market it burns well we were there for six years and every year i see the same people and it's like a reunion the first day of the market season children coming to the market that we know why it has programs and stuff like that and i type of the most one of the best days were when the library at the library table the kids made these little shakers but beans inside and i had a m going and the kids came and lined up in front of the musician and they were playing along with the musician and dancing and it was such a wonderful spirit you talk about europe you know having so many more markets to me that that is that it's that openness for people to  you know everybody is happy and it's it's just a wonderful feeling that maybe you could carry this out through their lives the rest day in and week well you know it would also brought to my memory when i was a child my mother didn't shop in supermarkets i don't even know if we had a supermarket around it was all little tiny strops and there was the vegetable sure the store there was the fish store you know and so and it all the interactions were very pleasant they knew each other by me although they call each other mr so and so mrs so and so they didn't use first names but there was always this friendliness and the sense that this is a fun time so when i was living in manhattan i did same thing i went into of the vegetable market and the m always said to me just a minute i got something in the back right you know and he'd go in the back and bring something that was partly better than what was sitting out on the display for you you know no this was his marketing skills but it made you feel good think that idea about creating connections this is you know really powerful and so for for many of us shopping has been kind of an anonymous experience you go into kind of this sterile big box environment and i guess some of the supermarkets are getting better about making it be a little bit more personal but in the end it's still kind of huge business feeding into these markets where the ability then going to go to a farmer the same farmer year after year week after week and buy your eggs and buy your munis just go home wonderful connection that i think we've lost so much of in this country so i think that's why it's so powerful to to really think about these markets built doing more than just selling food they really are building community and and and it just seems to me it would be really lovely and i know this is kind of a challenge of how you do this and in new jersey although they do it elsewhere in the world to keep these markets actually going throughout the year so that we're selling food that's kind of season out because even in the middle of winter you can go into a market in paris or and in rome in still buy produce some of it probably being trucked in from southern climates in those countries but the idea that you do your weekly shopping in one of these markets is really wonderful i would love to design my next i have him going to have a year round market someplace and i know there there is away from i think one of the reasons why our farm in a specially farming in new jersey right now is becoming a little bit more successful and a little more out there is because people are now becoming more educated than ever on where food comes from and the seasonality of products and i was in i did the dinner party two weeks ago would slow food and it was like a round table discussion about you know what makes food so great and what does it take in the community and sitting around a table with family and like all over past experiences and it was interesting talking with other people the table myself being the youngest one there having people who  e middle age be like well all we had growing up was can fruits and vegetables that's all we had and that was the era in which they grew up in or the you know that's the way that it was whereas when i grew up all we had was fresh fruits and want that relationship again and people want to know where the food came from and i believe one of the reasons is no one remembers how grandma cooked you know there's that disconnection between a generation  people want to you know they remember going with their grandmother to the butcher to them each up to your produce and you know for whatever reason it's get the generation of people want that for their kids and our biggest probably our biggest customer base is young parents with kids because now they know and they've been educated the last couple of years what's in a lot of processed food where food comes from markets being chucked from california or what does it take to truck that food from california to new jersey and still have it look and so much more great you know i mean so people want that connection because they're looking for that fresh product and they're trying to teach that to their kids so that what you're doing which are involved with is much more than the selling of produce or it's about culture it's about our culture and bringing back to our culture the values that we felt when bridging that we seem to have lost not only you know losing the cultural value and how it's grown but also the nutrition nutrition side of it so that has the health side to abu you know because here we read these alarming articles about how so many americans are overweight and living on fast food all the time and here is this you know here is the answer here is how do we bring them from theory here and you've got you've gone full circle that haven't you because you did go study culinary school as well fresh product other markets and so on and now with our own vegetable garden it's like i said it's always been my promise and still that instilled in me with this fresh product and on one of like least my slogans is the hardest thing is a simple things done well and so in order to have just a great character a great you know carried this or some like they're great salad or you really need this fresh greens and a simple olive oil or whatever  need you don't need to put fifty two different items in it to make it taste great you just need very simple good ingredients and that's what you know farmers markets are unable people to do these days so they don't mask you you know their fruits and vegetables and then meets with a hundred other things to make it actually taste good it's fresh you don't need anything else i think part of that knee on last lagging is that when people are telling to eat healthily and what does that actually mean and why and i think that that has been skipped over both in schools and not cultures why do we need help feeling really why you know not just because you're told to or the doctor says healthily you don't know what that really means and then how how to know how do you tell something's fresh and then what you're talking about nutrition the f d a has done studies you know in the nutrition in the last twenty years of our produce has dropped the nutritional value actually and that's because agribusiness and the use of high chemical farming because they're not really new would rejuvenate the soil so therefore the soil is empty and you going to get them to your produce out of it and unfortunately it produces cheap food food and water the fight for a basic human right and basically i went back and looked at what rachel carson had done and what was going on with agribusiness and i was you know it's wonderful to go back look at something you wrote which you don't remember all that you wrote and i notice here that i did as i was looking at the talking about the new jersey behind barons and there is this change that comes about during the changing years of the one nine hundred thirty s and beyond the situation transformed dress tickly and many of the small family farms disappeared workers for the massive agribusiness became a separate labor force from the overseas farmer so you see this was really part one of the changes that happen to us part of larger change in terms of kind of  industrialized food industrialized agriculture and so that's why the small family farms began to to disappear they were bought up and eaten up and they couldn't deal with the competition because  volume you can sell for less than they were selling things for volume and therefore too competitive for the small farmer and you had to have you know come from a family where they would say you don't need a lot but you want quality and when outside the city well you make a whole meal out of just fresh tomatoes freshly baked bread and maybe one other element i scallions my father loves scallion so that when we sit down have a meal just of that and it was i was like oh your whole credit system right oh yeah me oh and the smells in the tasters and stuff so getting people to sit down to really use their food to really you know instead of what do you think that i mean that's just so cute what's what's perhaps wrong with our culture is that we don't take time to sit down in need we don't take time to make food and then a meal be central to the experience of our day we're trying to fit it in  within twenty five thousand other things we're trying to do so that whole idea of just taking the time out having a few really meal having a meal together on a weekend is just something that is so important in terms of lowe's and central new jersey and there are thirteen of them and and it's interesting because most of them begin in thursday's fridays saturdays or sundays so with that you know beth fouhy certainly the picture unfortunately there are different day so didn't they don't could've compete with each other but there's lawrenceville and farmer's market there on sundays from nine to two the month open space farmer's market saturdays nine to one i go there sometimes friend on fridays and we used to do a lot of shopping and it was interesting because i'm a people watcher me because i'm a sociologist or maybe just because i'm a curious person but i love watching people and i was so interested in who goes there who shops there you know where were they coming from what did they buy this the west windsor that they have musicians they have food cooking demonstrations going on so that's another extension of it so they're from a saturday from nine to one and then the stockton's is friday eleven seven so this is just in this general area thirteen of them and apparently it's a growing and growing things growing movement i just want to say we don't have any crafts in our market to get used to at the library temple oh i'm sorry well that's crafters to come in and combine and have a harvest you know end of the market celebration i don't remember going through october twenty eighth this maybe on the twenty eighth when you're member for ok now ok i five watch your basis so i can only have so many people do so many markets and cost me a lot of capital in order for me to go to farmer's markets with the times and tables and so fortunately sometimes we have to not attend all of them  that's about it so ok i think you did very still got a smart man here ok so we have a couple minutes left and i just want to maybe for each one of you want to take a minute or so and just say what what you would both like to to happen or to come out of what your efforts of what you're doing is so less than what we saw i think it's that that community connection that people gather at a central location in princeton then and all walks of life  coming together at this at this intersection in the middle of town and that people are learning about food appreciating that the bounty of the pup the heart first harvest and not really enjoying good food throughout the season so that's wonderful so you're saying that the pharmacy it can be a source of community building yes absolutely and i think that's just beautiful idea like that and there has been one of my goals too because where we're  of the health of the environment of people learning about the health of the environment and how that affects the house of the food that goes in your body they're all interconnected all interconnected and and me is to me food can be a way of a farm or standpoint is farming in new jersey is not getting any easier because of you know labor issues taxes competition from other states coming in s restaurants in our distributors and stuff like that so for us is just a way to become more innovative and to instead of going through you know distributors and stuff like that it's easier to go direct to the customers takes a lot more time and effort on our part but it just what's keeping at least you know our farm successful at this point so that's interesting so it applies to how business can be more successful thank you very much this was a wonderful show i just want to announce that next month's for back story with joan goldstein i'm interviewing a policeman who had been at nine eleven during the event and we're going to focus on the ninth anniversary of nine eleven and i'm also going to do a show on what's happening in princeton you know tax assessment battles that are going on and doing that as well and in october probably on education what are we doing to education so you can see why back story with joan goldstein can go in a lot of directions because i'm looking at all sorts of social issues and thank you very much for being