In a push to get fresh veggies into every home, Waltham Fields Community Farm has set up a roadside market.
Under the motto, "local food for everyone" the Martha Creedon Outreach Market has set up shop for the past three weeks in parking lot of the Waltham Alliance to Create Housing office on Moody Street.
The stand, named after a past board president of the farm, offered vegetables and nutritional information yesterday to those who stopped by.
"We thought about doing a roving truck to get more food into the neighborhoods, but staff-wise it was impossible to do that," said Andy Scherer, assistant farm manager.
The farm has partnerships with the Waltham Family School, WATCH and Joseph Smith Community Center, Scherer said.
"It just made sense to start working with our community partners in order to spread the word of our outreach efforts," he said.
For $5 families can buy a brown paper bag and fill it to the brim with a seasonal selection of fresh produce. Every Tuesday the farm brings "a couple hundred pounds" of produce to the market, Scherer said.
Families gathered at the market yesterday moments after it opened to stock up on carrots, onions, corn, beans and several varieties of summer squash. Scherer said most are from the neighborhood or are directed to the market by the community partners.
Nelly Villegas, a student of the Waltham Family School, said she learned about the farm through staff at the school and has been coming every Tuesday for the last three weeks.
"My family today said they noticed it tastes very different (from supermarket vegetables)," she said. "My husband, today, he told me about the carrots. He said 'they are so sweet'."
Judy Fallows, project director of Healthy Waltham organization and a board director for the farm, said she's been working with families at the Waltham Family School through a grant with the state's Department of Public Health.
"Our grant is about healthy eating and our target population is school children in Waltham Public Schools and their families," she said. "One of our special projects is for the Waltham Family School. We've been doing a nutrition unit with these families."
Fallows said the farm supports itself by selling "CSA shares."
CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, is a system where consumers enter into a relationship with a local farm, receiving a weekly amount of produce. People pay to join the farm and a schedule to receive produce is created.
"We support ourselves at the farm by selling CSA shares, but that's a really expensive way to get vegetables. You have to plunk down $500 and you have to go every week for 20 weeks to get vegetables," Fallows said. "The CSA sales supports our mission to supply healthy food for the whole Waltham community ... but the farm would like to broaden its outreach into the community to provide produce to middle-income folks that wouldn't go to a soup kitchen."
Jessica Smith, a Tufts University student, helps bag vegetables for customers, as part of her internship at Tufts' Agriculture, Food and Environment Program, she said.
"In general I think it's really important to get high quality foods into under-served neighborhoods," she said. "I think it's a good way to start ... we need to do more outreach and advertising, but it's starting small ... through word of mouth, it will grow."
The Martha Creedon Outreach Market is open Tuesdays from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the WATCH parking lot, at 517 Moody St., across from the old South Middle School.
Jeff Gilbride can be reached at 781-398-8005 or at jgilbrid@cnc.com
