Webb City Sentinel market column - Wednesday 12-23-2020

I was once blessed with a wonderful pastor who always based his sermons on the trinity. That is to say, each sermon had three parts, and unfortunately by the time he finished the third part, I would usually have forgotten the first two parts. So I want to warn you ahead of time, this column is going to have three parts, but luckily for you, each part can be reviewed as needed if your attention span is as short as mine.

First, our market this week is the Christmas Eve Market! On Thursday, we will be open from 11 to 1 in the pavilion. Plan on a quick frosty holiday shopping trip to pick up what you need for Christmas and for the week. Braker Berry Farm, Fairhaven, Harmony Hill, and OakWoods will be there with fresh local produce. Fairhaven will also have treats for the table and the stocking – fresh picked out pecans, pecan brittle, peanut brittle, and chocolate peanut butter balls. Look for Harmony Hill’s baked goods, Clear Water Shrimp’s fresh shrimp for your holiday table, and MaMa JoJo’s fresh artisan pasta and sauces. Songbird’s Kitchen will have their wonderful egg rolls, crab Rangoon, and fried rice. And 2Ts Soap & Stuff will have what has probably been the most popular Christmas gifts at the market this year – handcrafted soaps, balms, beard oils, and more. Just right for stockings, small gifts for the neighbors, the postman or woman, and the other good people in your life. If you want to get creative, put together a basket full of these Webb City-made products for a larger one-of-a-kind gift.

Remember, the Christmas Eve Market is the last market of the year. Our next market after that will be the first Saturday in 2021!

Which brings us to part two of this column, a review of the year we are not likely to forget - 2020. This was the first full year led by our market manager, Rachael Lynch. Talk about a trial by fire. The year started off with lots of plans and took a sharp left turn. Rachael organized a February celebration of African American heritage using a grant from the Missouri Humanities Council. A Cinco de Mayo celebration complete with dancing and a mariachi band was on the calendar too but that will have to happen next year - we hope.

By late February we had big jugs of hand sanitizer throughout the pavilion and hand washing stations set up. The market sought and received solid guidance from the city and the county health department. I headed to Denver to help my daughter and son-in-law who were trying to work fulltime from home with a 2- and a 4-year-old home fulltime as well. From there I could continue to work on grants and grant opportunities and attend and learn from the weekly CDC on-line presentations. Rachael held the fort down at the market, putting in place protocols, spacing out vendors, setting up an online store, and perhaps the biggest project, ramrodding the Free Kids Meals. Normally, the market can only do themeals when school is out in the summer, but the USDA urged their summer partners to start early to ensure kids were not going hungry in the spring. The Webb City schools took care of breakfast and lunch on weekdays. The market handed out two breakfasts and two lunches each Saturday to take care of the weekends. Our commercial kitchen is the envy of most markets but even it was stretched to capacity by the preparing, packing, storing, and distributing as many as 1,500 meals on Saturdays.

Once summer arrived, the market went back to its meals, packed to-go, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. This fall, the market has provided breakfast and lunch to-go each Saturday.   Typically the market serves less than 4,000 free kids meals during a year. This year, we did over four times that.

We were fortunate this year to receive some critical grants. Expanding the pavilion has been a longtime goal at the market, so when a grant opportunity arose that could make that happen, I wrote the grant application, but needed a match.  I called long-time market supporter Bill Perry and asked if the Perry Foundation would consider providing those matching funds. He said he’d talk to Rebecca, his sister
who is also a long-time market booster, when she got home from a trip at the end of the week. Thirty minutes later Bill called back. He’d called Rebecca and the project was a go. While the grant was not approved, we learned that by eliminating the part of the proposal related to the current pavilion, we could build the 50-foot extension using just the Perry Foundation funding. The Perrys agreed and plans were in place even before we knew how important that extra space would become during a pandemic. We were also exceedingly fortunate that the Missouri Department of Agriculture found some unused grant funds that allowed us to put up another 140 running feet of tents and canopies.  Between the extension and the canopies we were able to increase our covered space by over 50%. That made a huge difference in reducing crowding and keeping the market vendors, customers, staff, and volunteers safe. In fact, once folks better understood how the virus was transmitted, the market felt like one of the safest places around.  And I think our customers felt the same way because despite a poor year for both sweet corn and peaches, two of our biggest crops, market sales increased in 2020.

 Another important grant allowed the market to re-start its SNAP matching program. In 2008 Wholesome Wave, a nonprofit on the east coast, began partnering with markets to provide a match of free produce tokens when SNAP customers purchased food stamp tokens to spend at participating markets. For eight years running, I contacted Wholesome Wave to see if they were taking on new markets.  Each time I got a no, so we just took a step of faith and started our own small matching program. As often happens, the market’s timing was charmed. Only a month later Wholesome Wave was looking for partners for a new federal matching program and because we’d created our own small pilot project, they were eager to include us. Their grant was awarded and we were able to increase our

SNAP customers’ produce purchasing  power. Results were impressive. Over the next three years, SNAP customers received more than $40,000 in extra produce, our farmers sold over $40,000 in extra produce, and customers reported significant health improvements like “I am no longer pre-diebetic!”  Then as that grant was ending we were approached by Fair Food Network, a Michigan nonprofit , who wanted us to join their program. So for another 18 months, we continued the matching program, until last fall funding was exhausted.  I was at a loss as to how we could continue this program that had been so successful and then Galen Foat found the Coover Foundation which is part of the Community Foundation of the Ozarks based in Springfield. I wrote a long-shot grant and, much to my surprise, it was awarded. Since we rolled out the program in May 2020, SNAP customers have received $14,300 in extra produce through the matching program. We expect to exhaust funding in early 2021. Normally that would make me sad, but we were invited last spring to partner with a Kansas City-based nonprofit on another grant application and it was awarded! We’ll start the program back up in late spring and funding is secure for another two and a half years. Did I mention that the market sometimes seems to lead a charmed life?

Our WIC program was started three years ago with $2,500 from Empty Bowls. This year we were ableto provide over $7,000 of extra produce, meat, and eggs to area low income young families participating in WIC. This program is privately funded. Though the market no longer receives any funding from Empty Bowls, others are stepping up – Soroptimists International of Joplin, the Robert Corely Foundation, donations from churches and individuals – including some folks who donated part of their stimulus checks. This winter the market sold used cookbooks, handmade pottery bowls and, with donations from customers, raised $600 for WIC. That will take care of one family shopping once a week for a year and leave another eight weeks for another family. If you’re looking for a way to do good and build the local economy, you won’t find a better program than this one that feeds our youngest neighbors healthy food and supports the sales of local farmers.

Finally, we received the good news that the Missouri Department of Agriculture is funding a multi-year project starting in 2021 at the market that will establish a teaching garden and provide nutrition and gardening instruction at the market for children and adults.

Despite all the problems presented by the pandemic in 2020, the market remained a safe gathering place and embraced its mission as a healthy welcoming community. The outlook for 2021 is bright. We are actively working with the city to improve parking and traffic flow for next year. The market has partnered with the MSSU Lion Coop to provide fresh produce for low income students. With our larger pavilion, teaching garden, accumulated knowledge on safe marketing, and a year’s worth of ideas for making the market even better, we are all looking forward to a 2021 we’ll remember for its celebrations and successes.

Finally, for part three which will be shorter than it should be. A third remembrance of another special part of the Webb City Sentinel, the cartoons of the remarkable Nic Frising. Nic’s cartoons could be biting, but mostly he was a cheerleader for all things good in Webb City. Personally, I have never known any other small town with such a talented, perceptive, and often times hilarious cartoonist. In fact, there are very few papers in the country that can boast its own cartoonist, much less one of such caliber. There is a display of Nic’s cartoons at the Clubhouse that includes the following description written by Bob Foos. I think it tells a lot about Nic and his place in Sentinel history.

“Fobby Boos. What’s happening in Webb City this week?”

That’s the routine that began my weekly Wednesday-night phone calls to Nic Frising for 25 years.

As well as Nic had Webb City figured out, many would probably be surprised that he had actually never lived here. I guess he got most of his insight about our culture while he was on the Webb City police force.

The gist of our conversations was me, as the straight man, explaining what was going to be in the newspaper, and him as the funny man, twisting my every word to make us laugh.

Nic’s cartoons were not based on my ideas. The rule was that I didn’t tell him what to draw, I told him what was going on. He’d be the one to determine what to draw.

He was decisive. Often, he’d be drawing while we were still on the phone.

It was not unusual for me to strike out at supplying cartoon material. Luckily, Nic played poker with a group of Webb Citians, self proclaimed as The Macho Club. Regular members included the Mosbaugh twins, Ron and Don, Don Darby, Bud Corner and Chuck Thornberry. They could usually come up with something. If not, Nic would draw them just talking about topics.

And if all else failed, there was always that crazy Missouri weather."