Carmel Farmers Market: Local Farmers Are Absolutely Essential

Local Farmers Are Absolutely Essential

Writer // Janelle Morrison • Photography // Courtesy of CFM and Jennifer Hershberger

Over the past few months, I have written articles supporting the Carmel Farmers Market and highlighting its continued dedication to the community by pivoting around the pandemic to meet the needs of its customers and vendors. Carmel Monthly has been a longtime supporter of the market and the long list of loyal vendors who have come out every Saturday to sell their products, all of whom would have had limited options, or no options, as to where they could sell their products if the market had not been classified as “essential” throughout the shutdown created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

How COVID-19 Has Affected Local Farms

Ispoke with two Indiana farmers and vendors of CFM about how the pandemic has impacted their ability to process and sell their products—in these cases, meat. As you may recall, once the news hit that national producers were shutting down their processing plants due to COVID-19 contagion, it became nearly impossible to find many meat cuts and chicken products that would have otherwise been in abundance. Couple that with the general public’s overbuying spurts, and voila— there was a shortage.

What many may not realize is what was going on behind the scenes on smallto medium-size local farms during the onset of the pandemic and how much worse it could have been had these local farmers not been paying attention to the impending shift in the nation’s food supply chain.

of hogs and cattle scheduled to butcher,” Phelps shared. “I saw how things were starting to shut down, and I doubled everything I could get in to slaughter. And then I booked out for one year when usually I would book out six months. Looking back, if I could’ve, I would’ve added even more. Once the pandemic hit and people panicked, it didn’t take long before we were overwhelmed by the demand. We had people wanting to buy hundreds of pounds of meat, and we had to put a limit on what people could have.”

Phelps added that now—six months later—they’re still working their way through a list of people wanting freezer beef and hogs.

“Six months later and the demand is still there,” Phelps reiterated. “I think people are eating more at home, and the demand for the product from the farmer will continue rather than from the restaurant. We’ve got

Phelps Family Farm and Becker Farms on Pivoting Amid Pandemic

Joe Phelps shared his thoughts on the pandemic and how it impacted his farming and packaging practices

“I could see that it [pandemic panic] was coming, and I had our normal amount and that dropped off to next to nothing— during the shutdown—and went from 300 dozen a week to zero. Fortunately, the demand was there from the consumer, and we were able to move those eggs.”

While farms like Phelps and Becker Farms are able to fulfill orders through Market Wagon—a home delivery service that works with local farms and purveyors—they heavily rely on the farmers markets such as CFM to get their products in front of consumers.

“We’ve been doing the markets for 22 years,” Phelps said. “We are always at the Carmel Farmers Market. And just because the meat is available in the grocery stores doesn’t mean you have to drop us. Please stay with the small guys because the small guys still need the support. If everybody goes back to Walmart, there won’t be a little guy.”

Kyle Becker added, “The date I will always look back on is March 13. That’s when Tom Hanks was on all the morning shows announcing he was COVID-19 don’t like stress.’ So, I sprang into action.”

Becker explained that prior to the onset of pandemic, 70% of his product was wholesale.

“I started converting to retail packaging. We knew the schools would be sending everybody home, and so we had to get our products repackaged for retail. Our retail customers—farmers market and Market Wagon—buy 1- to 2-pound packages versus the 10-pound packages we sell to colleges. My wife [Emily] gets most of the credit because she bagged all of the orders until midnight and would leave at 5 to 6 a.m. to start making deliveries.”

Becker concluded, “We need the customers to have access to us, and Ron [Carter] and the volunteer staff at CFM graciously took the time to open up the market and figured out how to do it responsibly so that the customers can continue to access our products.”

For a complete list of vendors at the Carmel Farmers Market, visit carmelfarmersmarket.com.

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a restaurant chain that we supply eggs to, For extended version scan QR or go to https://carmelmonthlymagazine.com/carmel-farmers-marketlocal-farmers/