St. Marys Nourish Market a local hub for fresh, affordable produce, cooking education and community connection

Volunteers and staff with the Local Community Food Centre mingle with community members as they shop for affordable, fresh and healthy produce at the St. Marys Nourish Market held on the first and third Thursday of every month from 2-4 p.m. at St. Marys United Church.

By Galen Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

While it may not be as visible in a small town like St. Marys as it is in larger cities, nearly one in four Canadians live in a food-insecure household, which means they struggle to access adequate food due to financial constraints.

For residents of St. Marys facing food insecurity, as well as those who value fresh, local produce available at the most affordable possible prices, the Local Community Food Centre (LCFC), based in Stratford, hosts its Nourish Market at St. Marys United Church from 2-4 p.m. on the first and third Thursday of every month.

“The Nourish Market was brought to St. Marys through the United Way (Perth-Huron),” LCFC community connector Julie Docker Johnson said. “The Nourish Market comes directly from the Local’s Access Market. … (The produce) gets put in our truck and then it comes to St. Marys. It gets all set up here with volunteers from St. Marys … and everything is bought at wholesale price and sold at the wholesale price. So, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, meat, eggs and then, as we get into growing season, our farm (in Stratford) has just had its first harvest of greens, so the greens are here and they’re free for people to take. Often in the summer too, somebody else brought some garlic scapes they had an abundance of, so we have them here and people are welcome to take them for free.

“It’s good, fresh, affordable food.”

In addition to the produce for sale – or free for the taking – the volunteers at the Nourish Market also try to educate marketgoers on how to use the ingredients they purchase to make delicious, healthy meals. Two such volunteers are Bruce and Nancy White who use produce from the market to create recipes and cook samples, both of which they share at the twice-monthly market.

By sharing their recipes and samples, as well as their passion for cooking, they hope to inspire locals to cook more at home.

“We like cooking and we like sharing in the community and working in the community, so it was something my wife and I thought would be kind of fun to do,” Bruce White said while serving up samples of vegetarian chili during a recent market. “We just thought, every time we cook and do an event, we have food left over and people say, ‘Can I buy leftovers?’

“So, we just thought it would be kind of neat to show people what they can do with what’s available here.”

In September, the Whites will begin leading cooking classes for locals who can use a little help with some of the basics like knife skills, prep work and cooking with herbs and spices. The cooking classes will run in the United Church’s enormous kitchen at the same time as the market, giving participants the chance to cook a meal, take home leftovers and purchase ingredients to try the recipe at home for their families and loved ones.

“They’re going to know what to do with a parsnip, or they’ll know how to prepare fennel,” Docker Johnson said. “A lot of this stuff, if you didn’t grow up with somebody who served turnip every Christmas, first of all, you don’t know how hard it is to cut, and then you don’t know what to do with it. So that’s the whole thing with us at the Local and here; if people don’t know what to do with certain things that could be foreign to them, this just introduces it to them, shows them how to use it and then when we do the cooking classes, we provide the recipes.

“So, you’re teaching them skills that make it a lot easier for people to eat good, fresh, nutritious food.”

Bruce White said he and his wife plan to start their cooking classes by teaching participants how to make spring rolls. With more than 100 online cooking classes under their belts, the Whites’ cooking classes are sure to be educational, fun and, above all, delicious.

Beneath all of this access to healthy produce and providing the skills and knowledge to cook with confidence is the idea of connecting to community. The market in St. Marys, Docker Johnson says, is a way for locals who can’t make it to Stratford to connect with others over food, whether it’s a senior living in isolation who has the opportunity to chat with friends, neighbours and total strangers for a few hours twice a month, or young parents in need of some guidance and advice around cooking healthy meals for their kids.

Funding from the annual Coldest Night of the Year fundraiser walk in St. Marys goes to support both the Nourish Market and the town’s community outreach worker who, in turn, often refers her clients – some of the town’s most vulnerable residents – to the market to help them address their own food-insecurity issues.

But the market isn’t just for those struggling with food insecurity. Docker Johnson encourages all residents of St. Marys to come and check it out. As she puts it, the more people who shop at the market, the more buying power the Local has to keep it stocked with fresh, healthy produce for all.