Baltimore Eats - OUR COMMON TABLE - July 2007

Anyone who is a regular farmers' market shopper can get excited about a good free-range egg, or locally grown ripe tomatoes, or freshly harvested sorrel and lovely mesculn field greens scented with herbs.

Most buyers have their favorite farmers they habitually visit. Truth be told, the most important person at the WFM is the coffee maven, Susie Hobson, who has been supplying piping hot cups of java every Saturday morning, heat wave or snowstorm, for some 10 years. It's a sad day at the market if, God forbid, something unforeseen happens, and Susie does not materialize. Do we need jangled nerves and frazzled shoppers on a Saturday morning market?

Susie has been dealing with food and customers/guests for many a moon. A former banquet waitress at high end Baltimore hotels, she has slung more than her fair share of hash. Susie still has a penchant for hospitality and although she left the banquet trays to a new generation of wait staff, she stills keeps her spatula in the business with part time catering for private parties and church functions.

But coffee is Susie's middle name, at least to the folks who know, love and depend on her at the WFM. Susie said she first got the idea to have a coffee stand at the market when she saw early morning market goers without a convient place to obtain their morning coffee. The market in those days was much less structured, so Susie just set up shop. And she's still there.

Her coffee has always been good and hot and most importantly, strong. For years she would buy huge bags of the old A&P brand 8 O'clock Coffee, freshly ground. It fit perfectly with Susie's delicious homemade baked goods. Susie said she really never thought too much about the coffee per se, but was mostly concerned that she would have plenty on hand each week.

One market day, Joan Norman, the powerhouse behind One Straw Farms at the WFM, suggested Susie start buying her coffee from a small local roaster based in Lauraville on Harford Road - Zeke's Coffee.

She could understand the philosophy behind Joan's plea to keep the money and the product local, but Susie was hesitant at first to change what had always been a successful formula.

To her, it was all well and good to have the local farmers come each week, bringing local food to a local market, but she never saw how any of that applied to her as a person who ran a coffee stand. Obviously, coffee does not grow around here so just how could a coffee stand be local?

None-the-less, Susie hooked up with Tom Rhodes, who owns and operates Zeke's Coffee. She found Tom to be an energetic guy with a natural affinity and enthusiasm for coffee roasting. He roasts coffee in small batches and buys many of his beans from Fair Trade labeled organic coffee farmers -ensuring a fair price to the small farmers who grown the beans and tend the land. His shop in Lauraville is a small local business, which in turn keeps much of the money from the coffee -granted a foreign commodity, in the local economy.

Soon Susie found herself buying milk and cream from the old-fashioned milk truck parked on the edge of the WFM on Barclay Street. South Mountain Creamery is a family of small-scale dairy farmers from Middletown, MD. They bottle their quality product in glass containers -and in my humble opinion, the taste is far superior to the industrial milk product found in large grocers!

By purchasing the cream for her coffee customers from South Mountain Creamery, Susie realized she was helping another small family farm stay in business and, again, she was keeping the money in the local community.

Susie's turnabout is all about connecting the dots. Her coffee stand's menu is now based on what is in season at the market. She's making new seasonal drinks like lemonades blended with local strawberries and blueberries from Dave Hochheimer's Black Rock Orchard. While you can still get ample squares of her famous pineapple upside down cake and creamy cheesecake, Susie is baking up delicacies using the fruits and berries at the peak of their season -a delicious strawberry cake, and outstanding old-fashioned peach and blueberry cobblers.

Now, Susie's story is not unique. I think shopping at farmers' markets has changed many people's shopping habits and outlooks. Neighborhood markets make food real and human. They connect us to the people who grow and produce this marvelous thing we call food. The farmers/producers have faces, names, families, and stories connecting us to them and ultimately to our food. And we thought it was just a cup of coffee... Go Susie!