The Market House

By Erin Sweeney

The Meadville Market House has been an integral cornerstone in the life of the Meadville community since 1870. It currently houses a wide variety of local and organic foods, hand-made crafts, fair trade products and a weekly farmer’s market every Saturday. In recent years, the Market House has begun to focus much more on improving the accessibility to local, healthy foods in Meadville through an initiative called Project ONE. Project O.N.E aims to bring partner organizations together under one umbrella to support this goal, while providing information about the availability and benefits of local foods.

My work as a Davies Leader this summer has been focused on continuing the development of Project ONE in its third year of existence. Project ONE currently includes the Market House’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, and will be expanding to include nutrition classes later in the summer and fall. Community Supported Agriculture programs create mutually supportive relationships between local farmers and community members. Members of the CSA receive weekly boxes of fresh, local produce, and local farmers are guaranteed a reliable market for their crops. The Market House’s “Summer’s Bounty” CSA is unique because it subsidizes weekly produce baskets for seniors through the subscriptions of full members, so that seniors in the area receive local produce at a greatly reduced price, providing them with access to a resource they may not otherwise be able to afford. This summer has been very successful so far with the number of seniors that we have been able to support through Project ONE, and we hope to begin canning classes at the Northwest Physician’s Association kitchen later next month.

We have also added information throughout the Market House about the different products and food staples that are available here, so that shoppers learn what foods such as quinoa and couscous are, and how to cook them. In this way, Project ONE is providing educational information to community members about healthy eating options. In the fall we look forward to the completion of the Market House cookbook which will focus on healthy, fairly simple recipes that use local and raw products.