From a slate of very well-qualified candidates, the 32nd Street Farmers Market recently elected four new community members and one vendor to join the ten-person all-volunteer Board; four persons on the Board were granted emeritus status. Newly elected Board members will serve two-year terms, which expire March 2027; they may run for office after a year.

On a raw, rainy market morning in January, Kaylah Abrams keeps count as a steady stream of patrons dump buckets of food scraps into large plastic bins sitting on a trailer. By noon, when the market closes, Kaylah will have tallied more than 100 contributors who bring buckets of eggshells, banana peels, stale bagels, and coffee grounds, weighing as much as 600 to 700 pounds.

In 1979, Dan Mendelson was a newly minted Johns Hopkins graduate and employee at Baltimore City’s Department of Housing and Community Development. He walked by the parking lot at the intersection of 33rd and Barclay Streets—labeled Waverly Lot by a ‘crappy sign’—and thought, “This could be a farmers market.”

In 2024, the 32nd Street Farmers Market continued to encourage and support its cadre of farmers, producers, and artisans who bring their finest products to the place customers call ‘Baltimore’s Best’!

As an undergrad, Julia Mair took a job at the 32nd Street Farmers Market selling lettuce, micro greens and pea shoots for Alluvion Aeroponics. “I needed something to do on the side and I love going to farmers markets,” she says. 

“You show up because they show up. If they show up, I show up.” Rain or shine, sweltering heat or below freezing, Merdalf has been playing his guitar at the 32nd Street Farmers Market for over thirteen years. Even on this rainy Saturday in March 2024, when shoppers are rushing to buy their groceries and spending less time lingering, he’s here—poncho, rain guitar, and his rainbow umbrella hat.

One Saturday the bean man wasn’t at the farmers’ market, he was always there every week, and I asked the woman who works with him, “Where is he?”