Coal county takes yet another stab at farmers' market to promote healthier living

After a study labeled Letcher County in southeastern Kentucky as one of the least healthy counties in one of the least healthy states, residents decided they needed to make changes. After five failed attempts to keep a farmers' market going, there are signs that the sixth time will be the charm, with the goal of this version "to create access to local, healthy food by promoting traditional foodways," Kelli Haywood reports for the Daily Yonder. (Haywood photo)

"Organizers want it to be a small boost to their community’s declining economy," suffering with the region's coal industry, Haywood writes. Local disc jockey Ben West hopes it will encourage residents to resume planting gardens and vegetable patches.  “I drive by large fields that I remember being covered in corn when I was younger.  But now they are just grown up with grass and weeds,” he told Haywood.

Haywood reports that the market is a success, but getting it started wasn't easy, especially after the previous failed attempts. West told her that this time around, organizers "compelled growers to think like a farmer that is going to have some income from their efforts. Another key element not included in the past was the marketing. This time, people were much more aware of it.”

Valerie Horn, coordinator of Letcher County’s branch of Grow Appalachia, a program of Berea College that teaches Appalachian people to grow their own food to feed themselves, told Haywood that tough economic times have played a key role in the markets' success. She said, “Perhaps our community realizes that we are the change that needs to happen for both our health and our quality of life. And the farmers' market enhances each of these. There seems to be almost an underlying desperation in our efforts to be successful, to provide not only healthy food choices for the community but economic opportunity as well.” (Read more)