Farmers Market Brings Communities Together

CBS New York

With the bleak central Brooklyn cityscape as a backdrop, you might be surprised what a little color is capable of. Crown Heights, a neighborhood scarred by riots between blacks and Jews in back in 1991, is coming together over something everyone needs — food, WCBS 880′s Alex Silverman reported.

“The Jewish community cooks with eggplant. The Caribbean community does not. I remember seeing a Caribbean guy asking a Jewish person, ‘What do you do with that?’ and vice versa. They asked ‘What do you do with callaloo?’” Nancie Katz told Silverman of what happens at the farmers market there.

This little market popped up there last fall at the corner of Albany Avenue and Lefferts Avenue, but its story goes back years.

Katz was a New York Daily News reporter who covered education and then the courts in Brooklyn. She said she saw how few food options there were in the area.

It’s so easy to find unhealthy food, as a man on the street pointed out the nearby dollar menu at McDonald’s.

“The disparity is just galling,” Katz said.

When she left the Daily News, Katz started working with the local schools starting up healthy eating programs.

“Became so popular – the elderly people started coming, the Jewish population started coming – that we realized why don’t we have a farmers market?” she said.

And now they do.

“It looks fresher than the supermarket,” one woman told Silverman. “I don’t want to rat out the supermarket but it looks really good.”

“And it’s good it’s on Thursday because it’s right before the Sabbath,” another said.

It’s a small and poignant way to bring together a community divided for so long.

“Both peoples are actually very creative, innovative, passionate, kind people, you know, and that comes out here,” Katz said.

6 Comments

  • lets not forget

    All this does is take away parnassah from the local fruit stores that provide is fruit all year round, in all weather conditions, who need to pay rent and tax so we can have a proper place to shop for fruit.

    PS when we support our own the money comes back to us since they in return shop in the other stores and pay tuition for school and so on

  • be aware

    some prices may be cheaper to get you to come to the market, but lots of their prices are higher then the local stores so know your prices

  • between blacks and Jews?

    “A riot between Blacks and Jews”

    The Jews and the Blacks rioted.
    Because everyone knows that the Jews of Crown Heights rioted.

    A riot is perpetrated upon a community. It is a one way street.
    It should read a “riot by the blacks against the Jewish community”

  • most over abused phrase about CH

    “Crown Heights, a neighborhood scarred by riots between blacks and Jews in back in 1991, is coming together…..”
    c’mon-enough with this over-used, over-abused phrase already…
    can’t these guys find anything else to write about

  • malcab

    i love the idea of the farmers market and getting produce / fruit & veggies fresh the day its harvested however – the prices could be a bit cheaper not more expensive the the grocery

    i was there last week and no very impressed this particular week – the orange beets were very small & expensive, not sure if the broccolli crown were not ripe and already rotting, etc

    after not getting all i needed at this market i wound up going to Circus Fruits on ft hamilton pkwy and found even their prices a lot cheaper –

    for me – unless the prices drop at the farmers market i wont be going back

  • pogrom no riots

    Baloney! There were no riots between blacks and Jew. There was a program against jews and say it as is.