Despite Fires and Covid, the Tenderloin Farmers Market Endures
By: Amy Smith
Tags: San Francisco, Farmers Market, Business, Food

“When it all started, no one knew what to expect, so we just plowed ahead like it was a normal year,” owner of Two Dog Farm Mark Bartle says of the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. But Bartle, who also operates a stand at the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, says it quickly became clear that closures of surrounding offices meant no workers to shop at the midweek market, and overall, a slew of regulations would change the way they did their business.

Throughout the pandemic, vendors like Bartle at the farmers market — open Wednesday and Saturday — have served as an essential service to a neighborhood that’s mainly low-income residents without access to a supermarket offering a slew of innovative programs to help those in need. This is true even as farmers have struggled through a combination of the pandemic and California’s devastating wildfire season.

“Heart of the City Farmers’ Market has served this community for 40 years and for the first time, we fear for the survival of this market,” says Kate Creps, Heart of the City’s executive director. “We’ve closed all nonessential programs to narrow our focus to providing food relief for a devastated neighborhood that lacks a supermarket and has limited access to fresh foods during this pandemic.”

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Overall, the market (which has operated for the past 40 years) has lost over $100,000 in expected stall fee income. The market’s leadership reports that more than 50 vendors have had to reduce or suspend participation, while at least 16 have been forced out of business permanently. Those farms that are still able to participate, many of which are families and longtime vendors with Heart of the City, are cutting costs and working longer hours.

“We still have expenses,” says Isabelle Pardez of Paredez Farms, located in Tulare County. “We had to cut down on how many people were working on the farm. Along with the fires, it’s had a drastic impact on our livelihood. We travel five hours in one direction. We’ve been doing this for more than 30 years. I grew up out here.”

For Bartle of Two Dog Farm, the fact that his business is still operational is just short of a miracle: His family home and farm building structure burned down in the fires earlier this season. While the crops were preserved, the farm fell within the burn zone — so they had limited access to harvesting. They lost, for example, a month’s production of peppers.

A big part of their survival: their supporters. A GoFundMe for the farm has raised $33,000, helping Two Dog get back on their feet. While it’s not enough to recover everything lost to fire, Bartle is appreciative of what he has and still shows up at Heart of the City twice a week. “You have to roll with the punches and do what you can.”

With this year’s record-setting fire season in California, five of the 10 largest fires in California history happened in the past few months. San Francisco residents are acutely aware of their severity. In September the smoke from the wildfires was so thick that it obscured the sunlight. Market customers shopped for produce amid a deep orange haze.

Customers shopping at Heart of the City Farmers’ Market in UN Plaza, under a smoke-filled, orangesky. Photo: Amy Smith

Even in areas where the wildfires haven’t been active, their smoke has affected many farms throughout the state. Poli Yerena from Yerena Farms in Watsonville has been serving Heart of the City since it began in 1981, and also serves on its board of directors. Smoke has impacted his berries and tomatoes, in particular, leaving visible marks from the ash, an example of how pervasive the impacts of the wildfires are no matter how close a grower’s farm is to the fires themselves.