By Laurie Casey

Local peeps: if you live in Chicago’s Greater West Side (roughly Garfield Park to Bellwood), come by the Austin Town Hall Farmers’ Market on Thursdays from 1 to 6 p.m. at 5610 West Lake Street, Chicago (312-744-0565). Through the end of October, enjoy a lovely setting—on a sprawling green lawn dotted with trees in front of the historic Austin Town Hall building. The vendors switch in and out: on the early summer day I came, there was a perfect mix of fresh produce, enticing hot meals, frozen meats, sprouted greens and other locally made foods.

Anchoring the weekly event is the Forty Acres Fresh Market, which just announced it will open its own stand-alone store in Austin’s new Soul City Corridor with a $2.5 million grant from the City of Chicago. Showing up at farmers markets and pop-up events for years, Forty Acres has been an oasis of healthy food in a neighborhood that lacks grocery stores. Their stall has a variety of beautiful produce, marked with charming chalkboard signs and affordable prices. “Come outside and have fun with us!” said Liz Abunaw, the visionary director of Forty Acres. She was behind the table, where I picked up a jar of Thai Ginger Lemongrass infused Pixie Dust Sea Salt, made in North Lawndale.

The other largest stall is Thank God 4 Raw and Vegan Treats booth, run by the amazing, indomitable Chef Michelle Scott, who creates a wide array of delectable vegan dishes and treats, such as hot tamales with cilantro, empanadas, blueberry shortcake, carrot cake donuts. About 15 years ago, despite being an athlete and marathon runner, she had a horrible case of Crohn’s Disease and was on 26 pills a day, as well as shots. “I refused to accept that would be the rest of my life,” she told me. So she changed her diet, and enrolled in Dominican University’s Dietetics Master’s Degree program. Now, she wants to share her knowledge about the power of a plant-based diet with her community. Chef Michelle was recently interviewed by The Wednesday Journal, so you should read her story there. I chose two vegan chocolate chip cookies—yum!

Like most farmers markets, this one takes cash, credit cards and Link cards. If you don’t know how to use a link card at the farmers market, the Link Up booth run by Corey Chatman of Experimental Station can help. If you would like to donate to the Link Match program, which doubles the amount of money Link card holders can spend at farmers markets, you can do that too. “We raise funds for the Link Match program, which is used across the state of Illinois at 105 locations, including farmers markets, co-ops and retail stores,” said Corey. “We want to help consumers eat more nutritious foods and get a fair price for local farmers.”

Garfield Park Community Gardens was also there. Today, there was produce from more than 6 gardens at the stall, including fresh greens, honey and even some vegetable plant starts. I picked up a fat bunch of basil and some Chinese greens for a stir fry I planned for dinner that evening.

Next to them was the Chicago Meat Collective, a woman-run organization that provides education on butchering for at-home chefs and coolers full of locally sourced lamb, pork, beef, sausages and prepared foods. I chose a bag of teriyaki beef jerky for my crew at home.

By this time I was getting a little hungry, and I noticed some delicious aromas wafting my way. JSpice is run by Jamy Franklin and Taj Savage. They run Ctrl Kitchen, a catering company based inside The Hatchery. “We love to feed people and to see people happy. When they’re happy, we’re happy,” said Jamy. I tried a sample of a spicy pork and rice dish and decided to buy four servings and bring it home for tomorrow’s dinner. He was selling 10 kinds of spice mixes, including jerk, orange-basil, lemon-lavendar, and chipotle barbecue. I chose their original barbecue mix and had visions of juicy flavorful ribs later in the month.