Albuquerque Grower’s Market

The Albuquerque Growers Market is a truly “local” farmer’s market. Based in Morningside park on Central Avenue in downtown Albuquerque, their motto is “local food for local bellies“. On a Saturday morning, you’ll find young children grinning through face paint, solitary grandmothers carefully selecting fruit, college students getting a burrito for breakfast, a tourist sipping their first wheatgrass juice – it’s one of the most integrated cross sections of Albuquerqueans I’ve ever seen – all in one place, at one time. They’re there enjoy the tunes from a local band, the greens from local farms, the shade from the trees, and it’s pretty downright sweet and hypnotic.

Don’t get me wrong – I still reminisce with utter devotion the glorious epiphany of produce and seafood and artisan food  from saturday morning farmer’s market at the Ferry Building in San Francisco. I have delicious flashbacks to the various upscale LA farmer’s markets that I’ve strolled with my mom. And I happily make my weekly pilgrimage to my home market in Santa Fe to grin at the farmers and ranchers who dedicate their lives to growing the food in my life – but those markets have a performative aspect. They are “events”, they cater to tourists as much as to locals and chefs, and the demographics of the shoppers is probably in the higher economic brackets. It doesn’t need to be that way, but to some degree, it is.

That’s what distinguishes the Albuquerque Growers Market: it really felt like a neighborhood market. And when I get really excited about the possibilities for insanely grand notions like “healthy Americans eating local, sustainable good food” – I recognize that what happens in Albuquerque every Saturday morning is the key to that kind of future.