February 2, 2013

Rotterdam's Harvest

Rotterdamse Oogst (Rotterdam's Harvest) is one of my favorite initiatives here in the city. It's a market comprised solely of farmers and makers from the region who make honest products. Today on the Noordplein, which is a city square in my neighborhood, they started a monthly market which will appear every first Saturday of the month. This same square is where the farmer's market had been run for many generations and now they are bringing it back. 

I'm thrilled about this. Even though the products are more expensive than in the grocery store and i am on an artists' budget, i went down and supported them. This is something that i find incredibly important and i'll tell you why... 

Family farms are disappearing at an alarming rate. They are being bought up and/or regulated by huge corporations. These gigantic companies don't give a damn about anything else than profit. The animals are treated only as a commodity and the food is being manipulated and is full of horrible fillers Besides that, the distance that this food has to travel to get to the supermarkets is an ecological nightmare. If we don't start to support our local, independent farmers pretty soon we won't even have a choice but to buy our food from these huge CRAP companies. I don't need to tell you how dangerous it would be to let our world food source be run by just a handfull of awful, irresponsible companies like Unilever. So with this in mind i urge you to please, whenever you have the chance, please support your farmer's markets and buy honest, local products. Good for you, good for your community and good for the earth. WIN WIN WIN!

Images from top to bottom: Bread from the Vlaamsche Broodhuys, A fella serving up crawfish from South Holland cooked on his frontier stove, Cheeses made by Au Bain Marie, Dutch Tooters and lastly, my purchases...Sour Dough Bread, Spicy Cheese from Rotterdam & New Orleans's Style Sausage from the Worst Maker. SCORE!

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