Ex-Farmers' Market Manager's Parting Shots

On any given summertime Saturday at the Oak Park Farmers' Market, you'll find thousands of happy customers buying produce, snacking on donuts and taking in bluegrass tunes. Smiles abound.

Former market manager Meredith Conn doesn't take credit for that. She does, however, take responsibility for maintaining the "grower's only" ethos that's prevailed over the weekly gathering for decades.

But now that the search is on for a new market manager, Conn has some words of wisdom for whoever takes over the position.

Earlier:

“Working for a municipality like Oak Park is not the easiest thing in the world," she said. "If you want to maintain authenticity for the kind of Farmers' Market that was cherished and we were a part of, then you better have a spine.”

Tough talk, considering it's about the area's premiere feel-good event. What's up with that?

Conn said she was relentlessly pressured by to bend the market's rigid rules and allow , Oak Park's popular eco-conscious restaurant and retail store, to vend there. She refused.

"If they aren’t making it they shouldn’t be there," she said. "If you start allowing retail, it will become a market like so many others have, a flea market, a food fest."

Conn, 51, took over as the Farmers' Market manager in 2006. She said the "badgering" and "bullying" became so intense that she resigned from the part-time job in summer 2011, two years after MSCM applied to become a vendor. Oak Park officials say Conn was fired. Citing confidentially over a personnel issue, they declined to elaborate.

(Conn was replaced temporarily by her assistant, Letitia Olmstead, who called the gig "a great job...I can't really say anything but positive things.")

Reached for comment, Marion Street Cheese Market co-owner and local philanthropist Mary Jo Schuler directed questions to her business partner Eric Larson, who did not return multiple calls.

Mike Charley, the village's health inspector who acts as liaison to the market, strongly denied talk about changing the ordinance — for Marion Street Cheese Market or for any other local business.

"There has never been any discussion at commission level or even at the staffing level about changing the market. Nothing. Zero," Charley said. "The Farmers' Market wouldn’t allow for anything else other than what it is now."

Rules Leave Some Vendors Vexed

The Marion Street Cheese Market applied to become a vendor just once, in July 2009, six months after Conn the village gave the green light to new rules allowing a Chicago-based breadmaker and retailer back into the market, officials said.

That decision was preceded by controversial rule changes in 2007 allowing a handful of "value added" vendors — cheese sellers The Cheese People, vinegar merchant Herbally Yours, family farm/soap retailer Scotch Hill Farms and artisan baker Red Hen Bread — to retain their spots at the market.

Caving to public outcry that said market participation was crushing local brick-and-mortar business, the village banned cheese sellers and bread makers from participating in the market's 2008 season. One year later, Red Hen was reintroduced to the market.

Despite the changes, shoppers can still find cheese at the market. Wisconsin-based producer Brunkow Cheese has continued its operations at the market uninterrupted since 2005.

Still, Marion Street Cheese Market, which prides itself on sustainable, local and responsibly produced food items, remains shut out. They've gone on to become one of the lead vendors at the Midweek Market, the more laid-back gathering which launched in summer 2010.

Conn remains confident with her decision, saying she was only adhering to the growers and raisers-only rules. Here's the ordinance.

"I’m not one to bow to the money in the village. And I didn’t. Not because I want to be the one who is foolishly hardheaded, but it's really because what I feel would have destroyed the Farmers' Market eventually," she said.

Melissa Wittenberg, chair of the volunteer Oak Park Farmers' Market Commission, likened the application process to that of an Ivy League university.

"Lots of people can apply, but it doesn't mean you're going to get in," she said. "If a cheese maker applies, and a cheese retailer applies, we’re going to choose the producer, not the third-party wholesaler."

Looking Ahead

Several months removed from her Oak Park responsibilities, Conn, a registered dietician and adjunct nutrition teacher at , is helping get the Elmwood Park Farmers Market underway.

The scars from her departure have just started to heal, she said.

"I stuck to my guns and I lost," she said. “So many of us love the community, and just like anything else it evolves. But people have to keep their eyes open a little bit…if truly what you want is a sustainable, organic, authentic farmers market, then this may not be lasting.”