Market Scenes: Focusing on Wellness and Thanking Sen. Hagan

Saturday marked the official start of the market's ability to offer those who receive Food & Nutrition Services benefits the opportunity to shop for local, healthy foods with their EBT cards. WWFM is the ONLY farmers' market in Wake County currently accepting EBT, debit and credit cards through the 21st Century Farmers Market Program!

We celebrated the start of this program with Nutrition & Wellness Day, featuring wellness screenings from WakeMed, plenty of nutrition and health education from Wake County Human Services, and Linda Watson of Cook for Good. We thank all of them for braving the heat to share their expertise with market shoppers!

EBT shoppers can take advantage of our Market Match incentive program while funding lasts--they can get $10 worth of free food when they swipe their EBT cards for up to $10. So $20 of local food for just $10! We thank the John Rex Endowment for its generosity in making this match possible and invite care-givers and service-providers in the community to help us spread the word about the program and the Market Match.

From DC to NC: Sen. Hagan Supports Local Farmers

WWFM President Juliann Zoetmulder also shared letters thanking Sen. Kay Hagan for her co-sponsorship of amendments to food safety legislation that would help protect local farmers. Lee Slade, a representative of Hagan’s Raleigh office, accepted the letters signed by more than 400 shoppers and vendors at WWFM and other area markets, toured the farmers’ market and visited with several of the farmers there to learn first-hand why amendments to S. 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, are so vital to North Carolina. The amendments seek to protect small farmers from being treated the same as large, industrial farming operations. In the photo are Zoetmulder, Slade (center) and Kevin Gordon, a market volunteer who coordinated the signatures and Slade's visit to the market.

Protecting such farmers is also key to keeping thriving farmers’ markets across the state open, as they meet a growing demand among consumers for access to local, healthy foods from farmers they know and trust.