Anne Madden, back row, fourth from right in hat, was a key figure in developing the idea for the farmer’s market. Anne passed away earlier this year. Kevin Brady photo.
A new farmer’s market featuring fresh, healthy produce and homespun, handcrafted goods is coming to South County starting Oct. 1.
The Balm Farmers Market will open Oct. 1 from 3 to 7 p.m. at the Good Samaritan Mission, 14920 Balm Wimauma Road, Wimauma. The market is scheduled for the first and third Thursdays of the month.
The idea for the farmer’s market was born more than a year ago, just before Good Samaritan’s annual Salsa Festival, a community celebration that draws hundreds of visitors to the organization’s Wimauma campus every spring.
Belt-tightening in the wake of a sluggish economy, Mission leaders started to look at new ways to generate income.
“As the economy was shrinking and churches and people were giving less, I thought we are going to have to find ways to generate new money or become self-reliant if we are going to survive,” said Theresa L. Cruz, who runs the Mission with her husband William.
“We are teaching self-reliance here; teaching people how to better their lives by helping themselves and I thought we needed to be modeling this ourselves. That was an eye-opening moment,” Cruz said. “So instead of looking for more money for the Mission, we needed to pull up our own bootstraps.”
Quality will be key, Cruz said.
“We are aiming at a more quality product rather than saying ‘we just take any old corn or cabbage,’” she said. “We know if we don’t have a quality product, if we get 50 people the first week and they come in and don’t see quality, they are not going to come back and tell their friends.”
While many small farms dot the landscape around the area, “people can’t just drop by those farms on a daily basis and pick up what they want. Knowing that it is locally grown, that someone really cared for that produce and it hasn’t been sitting on a truck on its way from Guatemala or California [is important],” Cruz continued.
When the late Anne Madden joined the Mission as a volunteer in 2014, she asked about “what kinds of things we would like to see, and we just threw her all these ideas and [the farmer’s market] was one that really stuck with her.”
A former member of the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit board of directors, the Hillsborough County Metropolitan Planning Organization and the SouthShore Arts Council, among many other local civic and community groups, Madden, along with Cruz, threw her considerable drive and influence behind the project, which is now bearing fruit.
Although she helped plant the seeds for the market, Madden didn’t live to see it bloom. She died May 28 of pancreatic cancer.
Homemade products from local residents will also be on display.The Mission is also helping locals develop their own home businesses, a complement to the group’s continuing education classes.
Between 18 and 20 vendors are expected for the inaugural farmer’s market. The event will include food vendors, commercial vendors and nonprofit vendors. Local families who already may have a product they would like to sell are also invited to share a booth at the event. “We want to help give them a kick start,” Cruz said.
The Good Samaritan booth will also be selling local raw honey and kale.
With new housing blossoming throughout South County — “there are $250,000 to $1 million homes being built around this area,” said William Cruz — Mission organizers have their eyes on their prospective neighbors as customers for the farmer’s market.
“Eventually we are going to be surrounded by [new developments] so in order for us to stay relevant with the endgame of [the Mission] being the center of the community, we want those people to be able to stop by on their way home from work and be able to buy fresh produce. We want to be relevant and adapt to those changes,” William Cruz said.
For more information, call 813-634-7136.
Good Samaritan Mission is a charitable, not-for-profit Christian ministry established in 1984. It is dedicated to a holistic approach to enhancing the spiritual, emotional/psychological and physical quality of life of farmworkers and others living in poverty. It currently serves the community by offering “incentivized” adult education classes, social services assistance and Back to School and Christmas outreach events.
