As proprietor of A New Leaf Farm Stand, a mobile produce market serving UAB and surrounding areas, Ellen Riley has gardening in her blood. She grew up gardening with her mother and helped open Oak Street Garden Shop in Mountain Brook. Riley says she loved toiling in the soil but jumped at a chance to become associate garden editor at Southern Living magazine. “I told them I took the job solely to work inside with air conditioning,” she laughs.
“Part of me would have been very content being there, but I had hit my 50s and I thought, you know, I’d like to do something else,” Riley says. “You get to this part of your life and start wanting to do something to help somebody else.”
 

“I’m a patient at Kirklin Clinic,” Riley says. “I started looking around and noticed that a lot of people I was seeing never had time for lunch. I would ask them what they were doing that night for dinner and they said, ‘Who knows.’ They were working long days and then had to drive home and get dinner on the table. About the same time, the Main Street Birmingham food deserts study came out. In this town it is absolutely crazy for people to not have access to fresh foods due to work or accessibility. I thought, wouldn’t it be great to bring that food into the workplace so they can take it home and cook? If people can’t go shopping we’ll bring the shopping to them.”

“Ellen came to us and said she had a business idea and needed help getting it started,” says Sam Crawford, director of business growth at Main Street Birmingham. “It was strictly her idea, and when we talked to her and found out her background it was right up our alley. It was another strategy for getting fresh produce in low-income communities. What she learned is that most of the people who purchase produce from her are not the doctors and professionals, they’re the hourly workers who go home to those food deserts.”
 

Every morning, Monday through Friday, Riley makes a trip to the Alabama Farmer’s Market on Finley Avenue. “My first target is the local farmer,” she says. “They come to the market in the middle of the night, so I get there around quarter to five or five. If you don’t get out there early, they’ve sold out and gone home. I try to buy from local farmers, then when I still have produce I need I buy regional.”
 

According to Crawford, the Alabama Farmer’s Market is helping organize food stands in other underserved areas of the city. “Pne of the problems with small produce farmers is they’ve been pushed out of the food market by huge producers that produce most of the world’s food,” Crawford says. “What [the Alabama Farmer’s Market] wants to do is help farmers who come to Finley Avenue.”
 

As part of Main Street Birmingham’s Urban Food Project, a Market Alliance is being planned that can organize food sellers and go into the areas of most need, the food deserts and areas of food imbalance in Jefferson County. “We can help peddlers get into those communities that may not even have a corner store and definitely not a grocery store,” Crawford says. “Most of them get their product from the Finley Avenue market, and we’re helping get them organized, helping them with marketing and helping them sell at a competitive price. This is also about small farms. If we can get customers to start purchasing from the regional farms through peddlers and farm stands, that helps the economy as well. You can support Alabama farmers and Alabama customers by eating Alabama produce and keeping food dollars in Alabama.”
 

In September, Main Street Birmingham partnered with Project Hopewell to bring fresh produce into southwest Birmingham, one of the largest areas of food imbalance as identified by the food deserts study. Crawford says Main Street Birmingham hopes to expand the public markets throughout the city. “Our strategy for these markets is to identify and work with a local community partner,” he says. “The thinking is that local community organizations that already serve these communities are much more in tune with the needs and the wants of the residents. We think that for long-term success of these projects the community has to accept it and we think the best way to do that is to have them involved in the actual planning and establishing. Long term, the community and the organization will take full ownership of the project.”
 

Back at UAB, Riley is spreading the joy of healthful eating. “It is so much fun,” she says. “We tell people how to cook a lot but we also ask a lot of questions. The ethnic diversity at UAB is incredible. Whereas one customer looks at a basket of okra and says, ‘I’m gonna fry that,’ an Indian customer looks at it and says, ‘I’m going to saute it with cumin and coriander and turmeric,’ and an African customer will say, ‘I’m going to make a stew with it.’ It’s infinitely more interesting to ask people what they’re going to make with the food they buy.”
 

“We’re trying to make people understand that the most nutritious, best tasting food is local,” Riley says. “The nutrition part for most people is secondary. They’re all about fresh and tasty and good looking. But behaviors change when people have access to healthy food.”

For more on Main Street Birmingham’s Urban Food Project, visit www.mainstreet birmingham.org. A New Leaf Farm Stand will be open through December. For information, visit www.anewleaffarmstand.com.