Newswatch 16’s Jack Culkin stopped by a new farmers’ market that’s offering safer shopping while giving community members access to homegrown items.<\/p>\n
SCRANTON, Pa. \u2014 A culmination of cabbage, baked goods, and succulents lay ready to be bought by shoppers in downtown Scranton.<\/p>\n
Tuesday morning saw dozens of people walking along Linden Street stop at Christopher A. Doherty Park for the first Electric City Farmers Market.<\/p>\n
“There’s, there’s nowhere in downtown right now that you could buy fresh produce. We have a growing residential community, uh, without a grocery store. So this is really filling a need,” said Liz Baldi, Scranton Tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Put together by Scranton Tomorrow, the market gives those in walking distance or within a short drive away the chance to get fresh goods all made and grown locally.<\/p>\n
“Strangely enough, our downtown is almost a food desert. If you wanted to, you probably couldn’t buy a tomato right now in downtown Scranton except for right over here,” said Wayne Evans, Scranton Tomorrow.<\/p>\n
After a recent cyclospora outbreak that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been linked to two deaths in Michigan, Hopkins Farm owner Leanne Hopkins says sales of iceberg lettuce and other produce have picked up. “We actually had a lot of fresh lettuce, but we’re now out of lettuce for right now because everybody, you know, bought it up. But I tell people, you know, there’s fresh tomatoes, there’s cucumbers, there’s onions, you can make, you know, a tomato, onion, cucumber salad, get away from the lettuce a little bit if you’re afraid to eat it.”<\/p>\n
“I feel more comfortable knowing that it’s freshly grown and I don’t have to worry about anything like that,” said April Powell, Scranton.<\/p>\n
April Powell and Peter Green got a bag full of goods only a short walk from their apartment. “It’s nice being able to just get to walk in and pick up some fresh produce without having to jump in the car,” said Green.<\/p>\n
Glenn Skivington of Factoryville says the drive is worth supporting local businesses and getting the freshest goods. “You get a better look, and the produce is fresher, and supporting local means a lot. If you go to a grocery store that says they buy local, it might be most of it, and maybe some of it’s not.”<\/p>\n
The Electric City Farmers Market will run from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. every Tuesday at Christopher A. Doherty Park in the city’s downtown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newswatch 16’s Jack Culkin stopped by a new farmers’ market that’s offering safer shopping while giving community members…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-259273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}