By Nancy Liu, Editor
Watermelons, bok choy, orchids, honey. These are just a few of the fresh farm goods you can find at the Alhambra Farmers Market on 2nd St between Main and Commonwealth every Sunday. The Alhambra Farmers Market celebrated its 40th anniversary on August 18 in style, with live bands, food stalls serving everything from fresh fruit juices to wontons, and the produce booths that have stocked fridges in Alhambra for the past four decades.
The Farmers Market started in 1984 as a traditional style of market that connected small farms directly with the people making the food, starting out with just 15 vendors and growing to 45-55 vendors each week now. While most other farmers markets today have expanded to become bigger productions, with other non-produce booths like handmade goods, the Alhambra Farmers Market maintains the spirit of a traditional market serving both farmers and the community.
It’s one of the things both vendors and residents love about the Alhambra Farmers Market. Eileen Wang, a longtime resident, says, “I just love the vibe of the farmers market – you know why? Because it’s community-oriented. You’ve got people who are growing food, they’re down-to-earth. People talk, people converse, people connect. It feels really like the old human way, before social media.”
Wang visits the market often with her partner, John Kwong. The two are eager to support local farmers and small businesses, especially as Kwong has personal ties to the market — he used to perform here with his band, and has a fondness for the food stalls in particular. While he eats, Wang shops for Asian vegetables.
Cary Harris of Harris Family Apiaries is one of two farmers that has been at the Farmers Market since it opened. His dad, he says, started their beekeeping business decades ago in a natural progression from a side job removing bees from people’s properties. He’s spent his whole life at farmers markets, but the Alhambra market is his favorite and he comes every week to sell honey.
“In the 80’s, there weren’t a lot of people doing markets. When the City was putting this market together they sent a letter to my dad inviting us to come out. He said yes, we came, and we’ve been doing this ever since,” Harris sums up.
The Alhambra Farmers Market isn’t like any other market that’s still around. Harry Wong, the Farmers Market Manager, is proud to maintain the focus on only offering fresh produce and farm goods at the market. That doesn’t mean the farmers market is small or limited by any means, it actually has more variety than other markets around Los Angeles. Wong says that it is rated third among farmers markets in Southern California.
“It’s not like other markets because other markets have arts & crafts, this one has more greens. If you take a walk like twenty feet that way, you can see some nice stuff, like Asian produce,” said Edgar Ornelas, who’s been selling his vegetables from Ornelas Produce at the Alhambra Farmers Market for five years. “For me it’s a good thing, because there’s variety.”
“There’s fresh seafood usually, there’s beef and lamb and chicken that they cut up and bring here. There’s more here than at most markets because people demand that they can do most of their grocery shopping here. The diversity of this market is drastically different, the choices in vegetables – there’s sugarcane here, and bitter melon,” Harris explains, gesturing to each booth as he points it out.
He shares Wong’s vision for the ideal farmers market and believes it’s better for both the farmers, who can sell their goods at reasonable prices, and the community who can access fresh greens and meet the growers themselves, a connection that’s not possible at a grocery store. “The reason this exists is because the small family farmers were being driven out of business so farmers had no places to sell their stuff, and then the community wasn’t able to buy with their hard-earned money what they deserved. The solution was to create farmers markets so the public would have a way to have accessibility to whoever was growing it, you could ask questions ‘was this sprayed, how was it grown?’ You can find out about the food you’re eating.”
Wang agrees that this is a huge draw for her. “It’s also important to support local growers,” she says. “Isn’t it amazing, you get food in season, you know where it’s coming from. It’s so beautiful. Sometimes we take it for granted, you know, but it’s way better than the quality you get at the supermarkets.”
While the 40th anniversary celebration made the market feel a little more festive than usual, with the live music and more non-produce stalls, the weekly market is a steadfast, positive community space. It accepts food assistance programs like EBT to uphold the concept of making produce more accessible.
Josephine Zazueta, who was at the celebration with her son, moved to Alhambra eight years ago for precisely that reason. “I really liked that it was a small community. We like this market since we’re used to everything, we like the special shops we go to. Chavez Farm has the best strawberries. We’re just so used to the community here, every time we come we run into people and we know our neighbors.”
The Alhambra Farmers Market is on every Sunday, rain or shine, except on Easter and on the occasion that Christmas or New Years Day falls on a Sunday. Ornelas recommends stopping by, “It’s a good time, just come out and walk and you’ll always find something new here.”
