ENGLEWOOD — A former NASA engineer, a single mom, a botanist with a backyard full of bromeliads — all have found new careers and incomes at farmers markets.
Jason Mellica is a new vendor at the Englewood Farmers Market, which started its second season this month at Pioneer Park on Dearborn Street with great expectations and a full house of 52 vendors. A botanist and hybridizer, Mellica makes his own varieties of bromeliads. He has thousands of them growing in his Sarasota backyard. One of the hybrids is named Apollo’s Poetry — a green plant with purple designs. Mellica works at four markets each week and came to Englewood, he said, because: “I wanted to expand out to the south.”
 |
| Jason Mellica, a botanist and entrepreneur, sells the bromeliads he grows in his Sarasota backyard at the Englewood Farmers Market Thursday. He makes his own hybrids of plants and says the Englewood market was the right place to expand his business. SUN PHOTO BY DANA SANCHEZ |
Dawn Morris is the owner, producer, caterer, janitor and pickler for C & D Delights of Lakeland. She pickles asparagus, okra, green beans and Brussels sprouts, to name a few. She too wanted to expand into farmers markets beyond the Tampa area and is new this year at the Englewood market. “The reason we’re here is we’ve heard the community really supports this market,” Morris said. “When we hear that a market has a community that supports it, then we check it out. I don’t think it needs to be a big city to be a good market.”
Rod Duncan runs a booth selling puttanesca, marinara and other Mediterranean-inspired food for Joy’s Gourmet, founded by a former NASA engineer who turned his family recipes into a business bottling jars of fresh, drownedin-garlic sauces and spreads. Duncan has booths at four area farmers markets. “I’m a glutton for punishment,” he said. Maria Hallabrin of Overbrook Gardens in Englewood tried the sauce and said it was excellent.
Jon-Claude Stevens drives to Englewood each week from Port St. Lucie — “Yes, ma’am, every week” — to sell his artisan breads and rolls. Farmers markets are his only outlet for sales, and he has employees at 19 different markets around Florida each week. “This is one of my favorites,” he said. “The people are friendly. The location is perfect. Last year, business was very good.” So what’s it like to work outside all day? “I love it,” Stevens said.
Christine Nordstrom is a single mom who gave up a retail “brickand-mortar” bakery to sell her baked goods at farmers markets. It allows her the freedom to be home when her kids get home from school, she said. “I didn’t see my kids for a year and a half,” she said. “Now I go to (six) different markets while my kids are at school. The weekends they’re with me, they go to the markets with me. They have fun.”
Don Musilli with the Englewood Center for Sustainability helps to organize the weekly markets, which are held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Thursday, except holidays, through April. “This market is run like a business,” Musilli said. “These are 52 entrepreneurs trying to make a living.” He cites, as an example, an executiveturned-lemonadestand-owner who runs a market business with the help of his homeschooled daughters. “There’s a story behind every vendor,” Musilli said.