Downtown Farmers Market: Not Just a Market, a Movement

The Saturday Ypsilanti Farmers Market is moving downtown!

Family, farmers, and food justice champions,

The seeds of change are taking root in Ypsilanti! This spring, we are thrilled to announce that the Ypsilanti Farmers Market is moving downtown to 16 S. Washington Street/Black Lives Matter Blvd. This shift is more than a change in location—it’s a deepened commitment to food sovereignty, economic resilience, and community nourishment at the heart of our city.

By planting roots in this space, we are breaking down barriers to food access and expanding opportunities for local growers, food makers, and artisans to share their harvests and creations. With the market just steps from the transit center, fresh, nourishing food is now even more within reach—whether you arrive by foot, bike, bus, or car. This move also makes it easier for families with small children, elders, and community members with disabilities to navigate to and through the market, affirming that everyone deserves a place at the table.

This move isn’t just about food—it’s about strengthening our local economy. Increased foot traffic and visibility mean that our farmers, vendors, and food makers have greater opportunities to grow their businesses, share their craft, and reach new customers.

But this is about more than commerce; it’s about community power.

Our new home at MarketPlace Hall unlocks the potential for deeper engagement—offering cooking demonstrations, gardening workshops, and hands-on classes that equip our neighbors with skills to feed themselves and their families. Move this line to here: A thriving farmers market fuels a vibrant downtown—bringing fresh food, economic opportunity, and gathering spaces to the heart of Ypsilanti.

A vibrant local food system is more essential than ever. As our community evolves and the climate shifts, we must strengthen the networks that sustain us. This market is not just a place to buy produce—it’s a space where small growers, local farmers, food makers, and artisans directly nourish and sustain their people. Whether it’s fresh fruits and vegetables, pantry staples, or locally prepared foods, every item at the market carries a story of care, tradition, and deep community connection.

Grown, crafted, and prepared by us—harvested, baked, and built for our people.

This is more than a market; it’s a movement. A space where every neighbor—regardless of zip code or income—has access to fresh, culturally relevant food. We remain steadfast in our commitment to SNAP, Double Up Food Bucks, and other food assistance programs to ensure nourishing, local food reaches every table.

Join us in celebrating this exciting new chapter! Opening Day is Saturday, May 3rd, from 9 AM - 1 PM—featuring live music, local flavors, and the joy of community in full bloom. Together, let’s build a food system that honors our growers, nourishes our neighbors, and invests in a thriving Ypsilanti.

We’ll see you at the market!

Julius Buzzard

P.S. We’re still accepting applications for vendors, community partners, and musicians! Apply online today.

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Georgia Gilmore & The Club From Nowhere

By Julius Buzzard • February 18, 2026

During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when formal fundraising was surveilled and criminalized, Georgia Gilmore organized something deceptively simple: a kitchen network . Known as The Club From Nowhere , Gilmore and other Black women sold pies, cakes, and home-cooked meals to quietly raise money for the movement. Their anonymity was protection. Their food was infrastructure. For over a year, as the boycott stretched on, these funds paid for carpools, gas, and daily survival. While history often centers on speeches and marches, Gilmore reminds us that revolutions are sustained behind the scenes by those who feed people, organize logistics, and keep the lights on. Her kitchen was a site of resistance. Her recipes were tools of liberation. At Growing Hope, we honor this lineage every time we invest in food entrepreneurs, incubator kitchens, and cooperative models. When food businesses are community-rooted, they do more than generate income; they fuel movements . Never underestimate what food can do. And never forget who has always been doing the work.

Fannie Lou Hamer & the Freedom Farm Cooperative

By Julius Buzzard • February 11, 2026

“If you have 400 quarts of greens and gumbo soup canned for the winter, nobody can push you around.” Fannie Lou Hamer said this not as a metaphor, but as a lived experience. In 1969, after being evicted from her plantation home for registering to vote, Hamer founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County, Mississippi. The goal was simple and radical: Black families deserved land, food, housing, and economic independence, without having to ask permission. Freedom Farm grew vegetables, raised livestock, built homes, and supported cooperative ownership. It addressed hunger and poverty at their roots, refusing the lie that liberation could come without material security. Hamer understood what we still grapple with today: political rights mean little without food sovereignty . Voting doesn’t protect you from hunger. Legislation doesn’t replace land. Dignity requires access to the means of survival. This is why Growing Hope centers farming, education, and entrepreneurship together. Food sovereignty is not just about what’s on your plate; it’s about who controls the systems that decide who eats .

The Black Panther Party & Free Breakfast

By Julius Buzzard • February 4, 2026

In 1969, the Black Panther Party launched the Free Breakfast for Children Program , serving tens of thousands of children across the United States every single school day. Not as an act of charity, but as a declaration. The Panthers understood something the dominant systems refused to acknowledge: a hungry child cannot learn, organize, or imagine a future . Feeding children was a political act. It was protection. It was strategy. Volunteers cooked before dawn in church basements and community centers. Children were served breakfast while learning about Black history, self-determination, and collective responsibility. The state noticed and felt threatened. The FBI labeled the program “the greatest threat” to internal security, not because it was violent, but because it worked. And it worked so well that the U.S. government was forced to expand public school breakfast programs nationwide . Mutual aid didn’t just meet immediate needs; it reshaped public policy . This is food sovereignty in action: communities identifying harm, meeting their own needs with dignity, and building power in the process. At Growing Hope, we carry this legacy forward. When we insist on dignified access to food, when we support farmers markets as sites of connection and not extraction, when we center youth and Black leadership, we are walking a well-worn path. When communities feed themselves, systems change.

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