*Community gathers at the ACHD’s Delridge Farmers Market, a uniquely formatted market which aims to bring options to the community (*Photos by Lorcan Stokes)

By Lorcan Stokes

The Delridge Farmers Market; a farmers market with a unique distribution model and focus on community accessibility for both vendors and customers, had their first market of the season on Saturday, May 20, for the third year in a row in the neighborhood of South Delridge.

Presented by the African Community Housing and Development (ACHD), a Black women-led organization focused on assisting African diaspora communities within King County, the market returned to an area of West Seattle that is both underserved and a food apartheid zone. Bilan Aden, Associate Director of ACHD, and Daniel Horst, ACHD’S farmer’s market & food access manager, explained what that entails.

“The neighborhood we serve is considered a food apartheid zone,” Aden said. “It’s basically intentionally designed for our community members not to have access to fresh sourced food and culturally relevant food.”

Both parts of Delridge and the neighboring area of High Park suffer from the consequences of being a food apartheid zone, also commonly known as a food desert. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Access Research Atlas, some areas within these neighborhoods are more than 1 mile away from the nearest supermarket.

“If you’re in the center of Delridge, there is no fresh food access within I think over two miles,” Horst said.

Horst further explained the reasons behind these areas’ lack of accessibility to a grocery store.

“Like Bilan said, food apartheid is an intentionally planned lack of resources due to essentially racist and white supremacist values that kept money out of communities and development out of communities of color. When you think about a desert, you think of naturally occurring, devoid of life, and devoid of culture. Those latter pieces are totally untrue,” Horst said. “There's a huge vibrant community here. It’s more indicative of the systemic pressures that neighborhoods like Delridge face trying to secure basic needs and resources like having a grocery store, having health care, or having whatever it is that a community needs available to it.”

The market, which ACHD came up with after talking with young people within the community, is helping against that lack of resources.

“We worked together with youth in the Delridge neighborhood to just talk about the lack of access to fresh healthy food and what does it look like to bring it to the community,” Aden said. “With those workshops, the youth brought together community members and their families to address some of this and the inequity to access to food and the community came together and said, “We need to create a farmers market.”

The market offers a variety of assistance to the neighborhood, with its food model focusing on wasting as little produce as possible.

“So we buy out all of our vendors' fresh produce at full price at the end of the day so that guarantee’s they'll have their sales for the day," Aden said. "Then we as an organization turn around and redistribute those extra produce that weren’t sold to community members that couldn’t make it to the market that day.”

This redistributed produce goes to seniors, ACHD clients at their homes, community members who couldn’t make it to market because of transport or a variety of reasons, and local food banks located around Seattle. Additionally, each market gives away free produce to early customers at the start of each market.

“One of our programs is to offer at least fifty bags of local organic produce that we source directly from BIPOC farmers at each market," Horst said. "Those bags are available with no questions asked to give folks as much unbridled access and the ability to self-select when you are in need."

The market, unlike most farmer’s markets, doesn't charge its vendors for space to sell their produce and goods.

“We don’t charge fees for entering into this market space because we know there are so many challenges and sales are never guaranteed,” Aden said.

The market does give vendors the option of renting tents and tables for only $10. This year’s Vendors, specializing in food, produce, and goods, include The Apple Guy, Afella Jollof Catering, Ardour Sisterz Candle Co, Black Origin Plants, Chef Jalissa Culinary Co., City Fruit, Heu's Blooms & Greens, Lillie's Passion, Ma & Pops, Regeneration Farm, Seola Bee Company, Small Axe Farm, Theary's Flowers and Produce, Umoja N'inguvu, and many more.

“All of the businesses at our market are 100% BIPOC-owned,” Horst said. “We got about 35-40 vendors signed up so far this year that will be joining us this season.”

Representation in this farmer’s market is important as it’s a rarity among farmer’s markets within King County, which are often expensive, lack diversity, and don’t carry produce and vegetables culturally important to different ethnic groups around the county.

“People should have access and have a choice,” Aden said. “People of color should be able to see their food reflected in these spaces where it's nice outside, people are getting along, and the food should represent their culture. But it also has to be affordable because everybody deserves fresh food.”

Horst reiterated a similar sentiment.

“Farmers markets are number one, the best way to engage consumers around food and number two, the easiest way for a consumer to see that there are folks who are growing all different types of food 10 miles, 20 miles away,” Horst said. “You might have no idea that person exists unless an outlet like the Delridge farmers market exists for those folks to come and share their cultural food and stories.”

As for later this summer, The ACHD is partnering with the likes of the Hope Academy, Somali Family Safety Task Force, and more to bring other programs to the market space later this summer.

“Our goal is to bring in mobile health and dental clinics and we will also have cooking classes, exercise classes, demonstrations and we will also have a kids activity area where kids can have more hands-on and intentional play programming at the farmers market," Aden said.

"That way, it’s a whole experience when you come to our farmers market.”

Horst highlighted what the market is meant to be for the community.

"We want to make sure the farmer's market is really not just a market but more of a community and safe space for folks to gather and to receive all matters of basic needs and resources whether that's food assistance, hygiene products, family and childcare needs," Horst said. "We're really trying to make a true one-stop shop for folks to not only get high-quality food but a wide array of resources from ACHD and other organizations that we work with."

The Delridge Farmer’s Market will be from 10 am to 2 pm every Saturday at 9421 18th Ave SW from May till the end of October.