Episode 224: Farmer Yon of The Hattie Carthan Market

The Farm Report

This week on The Farm Report, host Erin Fairbanks welcomes Farmer Yon, aka Yonnette Fleming, Founder of The Hattie Carthan Market, to the show. At the top of the show, Farmer Yon explains that The Hattie Carthan Community Farmers Market is a grassroots community revitalization project in Central Brooklyn, NYC, founded in 2009. The market, as well as the organization’s many facets, seeks to create a healthy community where each member has access to fresh food and the resources required to grow and distribute it in the Bedford Stuyvesant community. She goes on to explain how she initially saw a need for more urban agriculture and how she took it upon herself to engage the neighborhood and its youth to help the market flourish from the ground up. After the break, Erin and Farmer Yon discuss the notion of the farmer and chef and how these interconnected figures tend to be kept separate. They discuss ways to possibly rectify this discrepancy in order to enhance all aspects of the farm to table experience. Tune in for a wonderful conversation and to learn how to volunteer with the organization! This program was brought to you by Rolling Press.

“In order to be sustainable, sustainability has to do with the perpetuation of practices.” [6:49]

“With the creation of the new farm I was able to build my curriculum so that the youths may begin wrapping their heads around herbalism, and in a natural way.” [9:20]

—Farmer Yon on The Farm Report