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Market Force
July/August 2006
by Emerson Hilton ’03

Jennifer McTiernan H. ’99 is the founder and director of CitySeed, a New Haven nonprofit dedicated to providing New Haven residents with fresh, locally grown food from Connecticut farms. CitySeed started with one farmers' market in the summer of 2004 and introduced three more in 2005, all in different neighborhoods. This fall, CitySeed will join with the Yale Sustainable Food Project to bring a farmers' market to the Yale campus, so students can meet and buy from farmers who supply campus dining halls. Before taking on CitySeed full time, McTiernan H. (she added her husband’s last initial after marriage) worked for years at the Yale College admissions office.

Y: You’ve written that you were “culinarily disadvantaged” as a kid.

MH: In our house, food was not something that demanded creativity or much thought. The good news is that we always ate together as a family, so there was a tradition of coming together around food. Community begins around a table, even if the food is uninspired.

Y: How did you start caring about the quality of your food?

MH: Well, I realized that I had to start feeding myself, and that I wanted to eat good food. I had to pay someone to teach me. I enrolled in a professional baking and pastry course, because it seemed to me that if I could start with something that required strict adherence to recipes, I would be okay.

Y: Later you were a cooking apprentice with Alice Waters, at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, which emphasizes seasonal local food. Was that the inspiration for CitySeed?

MH: When I came back to New Haven, I wanted to have the same kind of connection to my food that I had had out in California. In Berkeley it’s very easy to eat delicious food all the time, from local sources that you trust.

Y: There’s a big difference between Berkeley and New Haven, though. I never really thought of New Haven as any sort of center for agriculture.

MH: But it was also a community that needed this to happen. We are 10 to 15 years behind in the creation of farmers' markets.

Y: You’ve said that your markets have a celebratory mood to them. Do you think that’s a big reason that people come? Or is the mood just a by-product of the fact that a lot of people are gathering together for a weekly event?

MH: People are concerned about all kinds of things when it comes to food—what should you be eating? is it healthy? is it fattening?—and so it’s rare to really enjoy it, and to find a space that’s about the enjoyment of it. And it’s difficult to think of another community space, or really any space, whether public or private, that attracts such a wide cross-section of a community on such a regular basis.

Y: You’re probably well versed in the critiques of industrial agriculture, but are the people who come to your markets aware of those arguments?

MH: Even if they’re not, the lessons of a farmers' market are subtle but powerful. I don’t have to stand there and hand out a synopsis of [Eric Schlosser’s book] Fast Food Nation to people. The best thing I can possibly do is appeal to someone on a very basic, visceral level. Just hand them a slice of a fresh, locally grown apple and they’ll get it.

Y: Because it tastes good, you mean?

MH: That’s the whole thing! Because it tastes like no apple they’ve probably even eaten before, they get it.

Y: I bet most Yale students go through their time here unaware that there’s even one farm in Connecticut.

MH: The same is true for most Connecticut residents. And, yes, there are over four thousand farms in the state. It’s amazing, but it’s also true that Connecticut lost the greatest percentage of farmland of any state in the country from 1997 to 2002.

Y: Does your family eat local food exclusively?

MH: As much as I can, I aim for that. I do have the good fortune, during the growing season, to be at four farmers' markets every week. We eat a lot of vegetables every week—a lot of kale, which I now love. It’s harder for other people, but I’d say in New Haven you can easily eat half of your food locally.

Y: Does that effort make you try more kinds of food than you otherwise would?

MH: I couldn’t even have told you what kale was two years ago.

Y: Your two-year-old daughter is going to realize one day that she’s the only one with a mom who’s been feeding her kale for 12 years.

MH: That’s probably true—she’s an organic baby. But although there are many messages directed at kids to make them want high-calorie processed food, I think if a family makes good food and mealtime important parts of daily life, then that kid won’t be sucked in.

Y: Would you ever want to be a farmer?

MH: I think about that a lot, but then I remember how poorly my houseplants fare. My skill set isn’t really applicable out in the field, as much as I romanticize it. My husband grew up on a farm, and he always says to me, “You don’t want to go live on a farm. You have no idea what it’s like.”

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