Washington DC: The People's Garden Market

Some times I do manage to be in the right place at the right time. We were sightseeing in DC on Friday and left our car at the Metro park-n-ride in Clinton, MD in favor of taking the train into the city. We came up the stairs by the Smithsonian Museum and were greeted to the grand view of the Capitol Building on the right, the Lincoln Memorial in the distant left, the Washington Monument straight ahead, and low and behold, just to our left on a closed off street, a farmer’s market. I spied the tell-tale white tents like a sailor spots a sail on the high seas. S. rolled her eyes and shook her head and followed me as we cut a straight line for the market that just happens to be open only of Fridays from 10am – 2pm.

Before we could get to the market, we encounted a wall of 12-foot tall sorghum plants growing on a plot of land in the center of the nation’s capitol. On the other side of this green barrier we entered the “People’s Garden” an ongoing project by the Department of Agriculture to teach people about local, sustainable, and organic foods. The garden is made up of numerous raised beds and cultivated plots where tomatoes, herbs, corn, lettuces, greens, peppers, squashes and pumpkins grew everywhere. The timbers of the raised beds are recycled from park maintenance projects, and even the composts is local and organic. The USDA donates all the food it grows (and a department rep told me they had collected several hundred pound so far this year) to homeless shelters and food banks, where people can have access to fresh vegetables. The garden has plans to expand and become a huge edible garden. The USDA also has hundreds of “community gardens” around the country.

After walking through the garden we came into the market and in many ways, it was the same as all the other markets I have been to: pickup trucks and trailers backed up to white tents with tables laden with baskets and crates of apples, tomatoes, herbs, eggplants, squashes, beans, and other late summer harvests. There was one vendor there who as quite busy, but I had to wonder if all the food they had was local or organic. Sorry, but it was just too shiny, to clean, to perfectly shaped and too uniformly sized. I wondered if the USDA has rules about such things. Maybe it is the high-tech future of organic foods, or maybe someone snuck in some South American Produce.

The clientele was different from what I normally see. Lots of powersuits and business dresses and high heels. But everyone had that rapt look of attention to the sight, smells and flavors or the plenty laid before them. I thought it was a great thing to find such a market in the center of the capitol, supported by the USDA as they continue to educate and expose jaded urban dwellers to really good foods grown practically in their backyards.

Definite high point of the vacation.