14 Years as a Green City Market Shopper Have Seen Much Change

Before and After Photo Comparison is Revealing

As I've written before, it took me about a year after Barb and I moved to Chicago in June 2011 to engage with the local farmers market community in general, and Green City Market in particular.

The photo above was taken on Wednesday, June 6, 2012, and was the first of what became uncounted number of visits to Green City and to the stands (there and at other markets) of Nichols Farm & Orchard, based in Marengo, Illinois, the Chicago region's biggest diversified produce farm.

This past Saturday was June 6, 2026 — the 14th anniversary to the day of my first Green City Market stop — so I made sure to get there to mark the occasion. I took this photo from approximately the same spot as I took the 2012 photo. Comparing the two pictures, I spotted some significant differences (and you may have too).

1) So many more shoppers

Green City Market was founded in 1999, so it was 13 years old when I first visited. It was already popular among the early wave of local food lovers, and had taken a leadership role in shaping the region's fast-growing farmers market community by establishing a roughly 200-mile-radius Chicago foodshed and setting the standard that only producers selling their own products could be vendors there.

But the constituency for locally grown food was then still in its formative days, and for a time in the past decade, it looks as though farmers market interest may have peaked. Then came COVID, with its supply chain breakdowns, store shutdowns and product shortages. Local farmers, who had their usual abundance, came to the rescue, new customers flocked to the markets, and fortunately many found this way of shopping to their liking.

Green City Market was a particular beneficiary, and the walkways even before the peak summer growing season occasionally become human traffic jams.

2) So many more vendors.

I had to say that I took the second photo from the approximate spot of the first, because the exact spot is now occupied by a microgreens stand that abuts a popular bakery's tent. Green City Market's flagship location is located near the south end of Lincoln Park (the actual park as well as the community of the same name), and for many years vendors covered only about half of the footprint. Now vendors virtually ring the whole area, right down to its southern end.

3) How 'bout them tomatoes?

That table full of Nichols' hothouse-grown heirloom tomatoes would have been unimaginable in 2012. There had been some U.S. growers who had success at growing tomatoes in dirt indoors as early as the 1980s, but until just a few years ago, the spring tomato crop was sparse and the flavor of the fruit (yes, fruit) wasn't great enough to dissuade many shoppers from the long wait until the brief but glorious summer field tomato season. Things changed, though, as improvements in indoor growing practices prompted producers such as Nichols to go all in, and these hothouse tomatoes now taste as good as they look.

4) No doubt, there is no drought.

Climate change has rendered Chicago's weather patterns more unpredictable than ever. But 2012 was a particularly bizarre year:

• An unprecedented heat wave hit the region in mid-March — before the end of winter — and sent temperatures soaring into the mid to upper 80s for most of a week, a fluke that had never happened before and has not happened since.

• These well-above-normal temperatures prompted fruit trees across the region to flower prematurely, which left them vulnerable to a killer frost in April. There was almost no tree fruit to be found in the region that year.

• As if that wasn't enough, a long drought set in, as you can see in the parched ground in the 2012 photo. Even more graphic...

The desert-like appearance of a hop farm in southwest Michigan that I visited later that same week.

Truth is every year, every season, is at least a little different from year to year in this region. Sometimes a lot. But whatever nature and our farmers bring, I've loved every bit of having local food be such a central part in my life.

I'm no pasture-raised spring chicken now. Do I have another 14 years in me? I hope so. 'Cause I'm have a good time, and I don't want to stop at all.

For the record, my Green City Market haul last Saturday (clockwise from upper left): cremini mushrooms from River Valley Ranch (Burlington, Wisconsin); pasture-raised eggs from Finn's Ranch (Buchanan, Michigan); spring onions from Nichols; strawberries and asparagus from Ellis Family Farms (Benton Harbor, Michigan); and cherry tomatoes from Frillman Farms (Berrien Springs, Michigan).