CULTIVATE is an online – Farmers’ Market in the St. Thomas, ON region. It was born out of a desire to strengthen and support the St. Thomas farming community in the context of COVID-19. Vicki Asher, manager of the Ignite Youth Center, tells us about her experience launching and running CULTIVATE Virtual Farmers’ Market with the help of a team of dedicated and hardworking young volunteers from their youth center. 

OFN-CAN:  Tell us how CULTIVATE came about?

Vicki: I have always been passionate about food, and where food comes from, and making that connection, and I spent three years managing a farmers’ market in St. Thomas. That’s where I built a lot of the relationships that led to CULTIVATE. My passion for local food and my connections to local farmers helped to intensified their support for, and interest in, our youth center.

When COVID-19 hit, a lot of our local farmers were worried and scared and not sure how they were going to sell their produce. So they began contacting me, asking if I would operate a virtual farmers’ market — if that was something that I would consider as manager of the youth center. 

The team at Ignite Youth Center  had already been discussing ways of doing this — various farm-to-table initiatives that we could take — and so CULTIVATE was born out of this desire to support local farmers through a difficult situation while at the same time connecting youth and teens to their food. We’ve found that the youth were really energised by knowing that they were providing a solution to a very real problem.

OFN-CAN: How did COVID-19 affect you?

Vicki: No one really knew what was going on. But we knew that food was essential, and we knew that we didn’t want to be a source of competition for any physical markets that already existed. That wasn’t our goal. Our goal was to reach an entirely different demographic — people who, whether for convenience or safety, wanted to shop online. Working with that demographic, we’ve found that virtual farmers’ markets can be a really great way of connecting people, while also helping them support local food.  

When the farmers began contacting us in March, we said we had already been planning a kind of farm-to-table program. Before March, we thought this was going to involve planning a garden, a community garden for local youth. We were thinking that, eventually, we could actually start selling the produce at a local farmer’s market. But then the pandemic hit, and we began to shift gears towards the idea of actually running a farmers’ market.. And that then we heard about OFN, and what you’re offering with this platform, and it all just seemed to fall into place. 

OFN-CAN: Why did you choose our platform?

Vicki: Open Food Network jumped out at me very simply because of that grassroots feel. I very much like that. It’s a not-for-profit. I feel that what they believe in is what I wanted this program to be. So it just seemed right. And then I had some of some vendors sit in on OFN webinars. They felt the same way.  

OFN-CAN: Were there any major difficulties setting up your Market?

Vicki: Honestly — No, everyone was so supportive of the idea. But I’m not going to say it wasn’t a lot of work! It was a lot of work to launch it. But everyone was fully supportive. 

There were struggles where farmers were trying to find time to set up their account and their profile, on top of everything else they were dealing with. And then there were administrative hurdles. But overall, everyone was so supportive — I can’t say enough about the OFN support team. I can’t imagine how frustrating that job must be — but yeah, I can’t say enough.

OFN-CAN: What are your goals with the Ignite Youth Center?

Vicki: We want to spark them to explore and learn and grow and be creative and all those amazing things that they should be doing, especially through their teen years. We want to support them, and we also want to give them opportunities to spark change and make change in our community — with CULTIVATE being one of the ways they can do that. They really have made a huge impact in our community.

OFN-CAN: What has the customer response been like?

Vicki: It’s been amazing. Customers get in touch all the time to say, ‘thank you so much for organizing this.’ People who didn’t like crowds to begin with have been happy to find another way of shopping. And those who have been kept away by Covid are glad of the chance to stay connected to local farmers. One customer told me, ‘This is like a godsend. I’m still buying from my favorite farmers. I’m getting my fresh bread.’ 

I had someone else call out of the blue to ask, ‘Are you going to be continuing this in the fall?’ And I said, ‘Well, we hope to.’ And they were so relieved. ‘This is so much fun. This is now what we do on Sunday mornings,’ they told me. ‘My husband and I, we sit down and we spend two hours shopping around the online market.’

Community support has been overwhelming as well. Our Mayor is a long time advocate of the Ignite Youth Centre. He posts “Mayors update” on his social media and has mentioned CULTIVATE a few times. He’s ordered from us a number of times as well. The Youth love seeing him!   

OFN-CAN: What’s in the future of CULTIVATE?

Vicki: We have had a really productive set of meetings with representatives from one of our local school boards, and they’ve already started to produce some great results. We will be offering a co-op position opportunity to a student in September, who’ll be asked to come in and operate CULTIVATE as their own co-op. This student will operate all the aspects of the market — accounting, operations, scheduling, recruitment, communications, etc — they’ll take on the role of co-op manager and will be responsible for recruiting and retaining staff. 

And then there’s the students enrolled in a Work Internship class at a local high school, who’ll come on Thursday’s (market day) to assist us with the receiving, sorting and delivery of orders. This will be part of their credit program. 

So that’s how much community support we’ve seen — our school boards are actually jumping in and supporting our initiative as well! I never dreamed when I was sitting at home when the pandemic first hit that CULTIVATE would turn into such a community.