Arcadian of the Month

Because we miss hanging out with you, we are doing the next best thing: shining a light on Arcadians who contribute so much to the community we are all apart of, and it's almost like we are hanging out together! So we're going to feature someone from Arcadia every month.  A farmer, an educator, a Mobile Market customer, a veteran farmer in training, a volunteer, a donor.  Let's call them the Arcadian of the Month?

This month we're introducing Jennie -- she started as a volunteer in 2017, then completed the Arcadia Veteran Farmer Reserve Training in 2018 and worked alongside Kenny and Katherine as a Farm Fellow in 2019. 

In 2020, Jennie is now farming her own plot as part of the Arcadia Veteran Farm Incubator. Jennie initially planned to grow just flowers and pollinator friendly crops;  she named her tiny farm Change of Plants. After agonizing for weeks over the Johnny's Seeds catalog in January she placed an order for 40 different flowers with plans for a summer bouquet flower subscription program and plenty of nectar for the pollinators.

But, true to its name, Change of Plants is changing. The Coronavirus prompted Jennie to grow food for humans, too. "If ever there's a time to grow food it's now," she said. What started out as  1/4 acre of flowers is now 1/8 an acre of vegetables she describes as "a salad bowl" destined for CSA subscribers. The remaining 1/8 of an acre will become a "pollinator experience" with cutting gardens, a walking path, a loofah house and a bench set in a thicket of sunflowers.

Jennie's journey to farming is about as straight as the winding path she she carved out with a tractor on her small farm last weekend. The child of heroin addicts, she grew up in foster care in Southern California. She signed Marine Corps enlistment papers at 16 to get herself out of trouble. After four tumultuous years stationed at a base in California, she left the Corps to get married and start college in New Mexico. September 11th interrupted her last semester; she found a recruiter to bring her back on active duty a few days after the Towers fell. She spent much of the next decade telling the Marine Corps story as a public affairs officer while her husband and friends went off to war.

After dozens of funerals and a divorce, she hung up her uniform for good in 2006 but continued as a civilian public affairs officer for the Department of the Navy. She then headed to Afghanistan to work on a communications project for the U.S. Army.

Home from Afghanistan and recovering from injuries sustained overseas, she met and fell in love with an active duty Marine. They dreamed of rural life and starting a farm --a life far away from the war, the military, and the city.  Love emboldened the self-described city girl, and they started looking at property.

The future changed abruptly when her fiance, battling with post traumatic stress, took his own life.

Jennie describes herself as "adrift, angry and trying to figure out what the next chapter held." A scooter accident left her with a traumatic brain injury; it wasn't her first head injury but it was the most significant. Still recovering, she accepted a job offer at the United Nations headquarters and moved cross-country to New York. The pace and cacophony of the city revealed the extent of her brain injury. Combined with the the grief and anger she'd shoved aside after her fiance's suicide, old traumas she hadn't dealt with from her time in uniform, and the overwhelming rush of life in NYC, she says she felt like she was drowning.

Reprieve came -- and the inkling of a new life dawned -- in the form of weekend visits to a farm in New Jersey. She left New York two years after arriving to "chase down that last semester of school" and find out what life away from the city held. That decision lead her to Arcadia -- and this time the farm dream was her own.

Spending time on the farm has been the perfect therapy -- and, she says, likely saved her life.

"Arcadia is the community I didn't know I was looking for. It's a place to learn and grow--a place where my deficits aren't glaring because they don't know me any other way. They answer my questions, even when I ask them again the next day, and the next," she laughed. "I'm excited to put some of my knowledge to the test on my quarter acre and can't wait to see what the season yields."

When the city shut down, the Arcadia Mobile Market opened up -- nearly two months ahead of schedule

Arcadia's Mobile Market Director Erin Close realized in March that thousands of regular market customers were disproportionately affected by COVID-19 quarantine restrictions.

Close knew the people who purchased more than 50 tons of fresh local produce at the Mobile Market's 10 sites across Washington D.C. in 2019 would struggle to access fresh food. In the best of times, getting food in these 10 neighborhoods is tough. Pandemic restrictions made it worse.

It hit home when -- pre-pandemic -- she announced a monthly "pop-up" market, a way to stay in touch with customers before the official season began in May. Within minutes of announcing the market -- just as the quarantine was about to go into effect -- she had more than 200 orders from customers otherwise unable to access grocery stores.

On a recent Saturday, Pam Curry, a retired legal secretary who's been a Mobile Market customer for two years, waited in line to buy "her" chicken thighs as she lovingly refers to the Ayrshire Farm poultry she's come to expect from the market.

"I'm a senior and I have health issues--I'm not going to a grocery store right now," she explained. "Erin and her crew bringing the market to these communities a month early like this was a real relief. People don't believe it when I say we get farm to table right here in our own neighborhood but it's the truth, thanks to Erin and the Market."

Close, in her third year leading the Market, understood what the pandemic would mean for her customers and swung into action. She swiftly created a safe food distribution training plan based on best practices for social distancing for customers and employees and implemented it for her March markets. And she quickly made plans to implement multiple weekly markets through April to serve her customers. When the mayor required outdoor markets to apply for waivers to operate, the Arcadia Mobile Market was ready: it received the first one granted, on April 9.

Erin Close stands with Patricia Williams, the ANC commissioner for 5E02 and longtime supporter and volunteer of Arcadia's Mobile Market in Edgewood. 

Close learned from her first pandemic market and implemented tweaks to her plan. She added employees to manage lines, calling up alumni staff to ensure she had a practiced team; she asked the farmer to pre-pack boxes for efficiency; and she built sneeze guards and distributed fabric masks that she washes for staff between uses.

Arcadia's long-time Mobile Market partner the Bainum Family Foundation then stepped in with the missing piece: the funds to cover operating these unexpected markets and the 300 fresh local produce boxes from Earth N Eats Farm in central Pennsylvania to be distributed for free every week. Supplemented with leafy greens from other local farms, these boxes included lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, beets, potatoes and sweet potatoes. Mindful of her customers' purchasing habits, Close also set up a socially distanced free-choice market, accepting cash, credit, and SNAP for customers who wanted to buy meat, eggs, and additional produce to supplement their boxes -- as well as for new customers who traveled across town to shop for local food in the fresh air, rather than a grocery store.

Customers at the Edgewood pop up market followed social distancing guidelines as they picked up produce boxes May 1.

The produce boxes, distributed free on a first come, first served basis, were a lifeline for some of the market's regular customers in neighborhoods where brick and mortar stores are few and far between. People lined up down the street, six feet between them and waited for their turn to step to the table and grab a full box and a bag before purchasing a la carte items, including eggs, yogurt, fresh honey, apples, beef and pork ribs, chickens, cutlets and thighs. 

Customers wait to buy a la carte items after picking up boxes of fresh produce. 

Customers who used SNAP/EBT (food stamps) or WIC received a 50% discount on a la carte purchases, making the pop-up markets even more important to customers quarantined without access to the myriad of food delivery options much of the country is using to fill their pantries. Many such services require credit cards, and some Mobile Market customers don't have them.

Lissette Ampara, back for her second season as a Mobile Market employee, acted as a personal shopper for market customers to help maintain prop[er social distancing. 

Close and her team marked distances off on the sidewalk, set up hand-washing stations, and handed out masks for customers who didn't have one. Arcadia staff served as personal shoppers so customers didn't have to handle anything until they walked away with their purchase.

Behind the scenes market employees were reminded to practice good hygiene while at the market and at home; to treat their cell phone like their third hand [how often do you wipe your phone down!?] and to limit their exposure to people when they weren't at work to diminish their chance of exposure to the Coronavirus.

Simple and effective: shoppers were encouraged to wash their hands as they made their way to the pick-up station.

Pam Curry waits in line as a Mobile Market employee gathered the items she selected.

Curry stepped to the front of the line to pay as one of the market employees bagged the items she selected for purchase. She didn't have a produce box.

"I got a box last week and it was so plentiful I don't need anything more today. I shared some with my neighbor and I still have some left," Curry said. "I see people here with a greater need than I have right now--let them enjoy the bounty this week."

The Mobile Market offered two pop-up markets per week for four weeks, giving out 150 bountiful boxes of produce at each site.

Gabriela Gomez, the newest employee on the Mobile Market team, said it was a long day and a lot of satisfying work. "It's a bizarre time in the world right now, and there are so many people in need," she said. "It's great to see people come together, to see everyone is welcome here. I'm glad to be part of it."

Setting the pace, Gabriela Gomez stacks more produce boxes and prepares to slide them to waiting customers.

Arcadia's regular market season, with financial support from Bainum, DC Health, the Family Alliance Foundation and the Cloudbreak Foundation, is scheduled to open the first week of June.  Erin and her market team have paused pandemic operations for the remainder of May to hire and train more staff and to revise the market model for the coming season.

The hastily recalled team of Mobile Market employees were proud to step in and serve their customers in a time of need.

For more information about the Mobile Market, a list of sites, sourcing partners and opportunities to get involved, visit our page and see why the customers are so excited to see us season after season.  See you in June!

All packed up and ready to go, the Mobile Market team wrapped up a successful stop.