Fifty years ago, a group of 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis alumni and students envisioned a new way to buy local, healthy food and founded the Davis Farmers Market. They helped change state regulations around direct selling by farmers and made the Davis market a model for markets throughout the state.
They will celebrate the milestone on Aug. 1 with a special program at the market and new cookbook by market co-founder Ann M. Evans 75 and Geogeanne Brennan. Market Memories Cookbook: Celebrating 50 Years (Elderflower Press, 2026) .
I wanted to celebrate the anniversary in the best way that I could to give it a gift, said Evans. Thats really the purpose of this book. I am so happy that [the market] has been successful and that it has a deep tap root. It's really such a centerpiece of the community.
Evans, who later became mayor of Davis, organized with market co-founders Martin Barnes, M.S. 75, Kathleen Barsotti, M.S. 74, Jeff and Annie Main, both class of 76, and Henry Esbenshade, M.A. 77. They received permission to set up in Central Park in downtown Davis. The market has been a town mainstay, now held every Wednesday evening and Saturday morning, drawing up to 10,000 people each week.
The others were far more involved in the structure of the farmers market than I was. I was always [working] from a consumer-facing point of view. But they all wanted to be farmers and were farmers and became farmers. And so this was their market.
Did you have any sense in the early days that the Davis Farmers Market would be as successful as it is?
Oh, sure, yes, definitely. You give your life to these institutions when you start them up, and so you don't ever consider that they wouldn't be something that is as needed in the future as it is right then.
How did you know the other founders of the market?
There was a program called Agrarian Effort on campus at that time. And Professor Isao Fujimoto I didn't take a class from him, but I [was his] work-study student for his Alternatives in Agricultural Research Project. That's where all of us combined interests. Isao held potlucks at his house every Friday night in the sort of old academic way. And he was a community organizer, so I learned a lot about community and food systems, though nobody called it a food system at that time. He helped empower people to create the kind of change they would like to see. Out of that came the food buying club both to save money and to get the kind of foods we wanted. We were all involved in that. [Fujimoto died in 2022.]
How did you decide to weave stories and quotes from other people involved over the years into the new cookbook?
Early on, we really wanted to call it Market Memories. We put the book together, and I thought, Gosh, we really need some memories in there. And the foundation of those memories, of course, are the historic partners who helped bring it about. But really, the current day shoppers and sellers their memories are equally important. So we reached out to every vendor at the market and spread the word pretty widely. We approached a number of people individually and then by the end I was getting calls and emails from people saying they wanted to add a quote. We were able to get a few last-minute ones in too, which I felt really good about.
What was it like to read some of their stories?
I cried reading some of them. They were overwhelming to me, the heartfelt love of what the market means to them, their experience, and it meant so many different things to people.
So how long did the book take to put together?
We actually did it and got it to the printer within eight months. Randii [MacNear, executive director of the market] called me and asked if I would reprint the second book, The Davis Farmers Market Cookbook (Elderflower Press, 2016), because it was out of print and sold out. I said no it was just too late and cookbooks have a certain life. I thought about it and decided I would do a new book and approached Georgeanne Brennan. We agreed to do it together and we did it very, very quickly because we wanted it to come out ahead of the anniversary celebration.
You and she illustrated the whole book together. How did that work?
I did the drawings, and Georgeanne painted them with a watercolor wash. Either one of us could have done the whole thing ourselves. I work in a different medium, but we wanted to work together. We're looking to inspire people to cook from the market. We wanted the recipes to be simple, straightforward, seasonal, and inspire people to be in their kitchen and to be with other people eating good food.