Berkeley Farmers’ Markets
Your Local Farmers’ Market—A Well of Resilience and Community Care
Published September 7, 2026 · Written by Hanne Williams-Baron
Trains whiz by in the background, their conductors honking and waving. Clouds shift overhead, pooling into the sky as it turns from denim blue into a hazy pink. A fashion show begins on the sidewalk: old t-shirts and sensible shoes, big necklaces, freckles and braids.
There’s so much information to be found in the sensations of a market: the noise of the traffic on the street nearby, or the chatter of the birds in the trees overhead. The smell of roasting chicken at one market, the fragrant basil at another. One of my favorite parts of my job as a Market Match coordinator is that I get to visit farmers’ markets across the state for our yearly site visits. This past year I’ve visited markets in and around Los Angeles, West Oakland, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, and Napa. Each market brings its own proprietary blend of charisma, laughter, chaos, and joy.
Some markets I’ve visited are tiny, hosting 5 stalwart vendors and a loyal, consistent customer base. Others are huge and sprawling, taking root in parking lots, city parks, and open fields. One market was woven into the courtyard of a large city hospital, and I watched with reverence as patients, nurses, doctors, and hospital staff all roamed the stalls, sampling produce and checking on each other tenderly.
Farmers’ markets are places of healing. They help to heal our bodies by nourishing us with nutrient-dense foods, produce we can trust not to give us diseases brought on by large-scale corporate farms that ship their food across states and borders, food likely harvested by exploited workers who are unable to take bathroom breaks or find respite from extreme weather and pesticides. Farmers’ markets help heal our communities, bringing neighbors out of their homes and individualized routines to build relationships with each other, including the people who grow their food. And they help heal our neighborhoods, activating otherwise vacant public space with music, color, warmth, and activity.
The Napa Farmers’ Market has played a special role in the healing of its community. Napa’s Executive Director, Cara Mae Wooledge, MPH, has a previous life as a Public Health worker. Before Cara Mae worked with Napa FM, she was a health education specialist with Napa County’s Health and Human Services Public Health Division. In her graduate program at UCLA, she focused her studies on pandemic response.
When the COVID pandemic hit in 2020, Cara Mae knew exactly what to do. And, as she told me during my site visit, “None of us in Public Health were surprised. We’d all been saying that a pandemic was around the corner. So we were ready to leap into action.”
Cara Mae developed COVID safety protocols for farmers’ markets that were shared across California, and even nationally, to help markets safely stay open while mitigating the risks of COVID spreading. She worked with her market to develop accessible information about how to space out stalls, enforce masking mandates, and communicate health information to community members, and shared it widely.
As I spoke with Cara Mae and Napa FM team members Mimi Adam and Carmen Briwa, I was struck by their plain, clear commitment to food access. They see the farmers’ market as a fundamental pillar of our social safety net. They talked about Market Match as one of the core ways that low-income Napa families can access healthy, fresh foods; they were determined not to let COVID, government funding cuts, or anything else stop them from distributing food. Their passion for Market Match has aided their advocacy – thanks to partnerships with additional local funders, Napa FM has no cap on their matching funds. That means that Market Match shoppers have their EBT doubled no matter what, every visit.
Farmers’ markets are portals to a world where we all look out for each other, and we don’t give up on each other. Where we are rewarded each time we show up, and remember how good it feels in our bodies and our spirits. As the polycrisis deepens, we will all need to practice the resilience and community care that our farmers and market operators model for us each day.
As I headed home from my visit to Napa’s market, I walked along the hot pavement of Napa’s downtown river park and checked in with my senses. It was hot out, so I stopped to sit in the shade. The river was quiet and clear. I pulled out a fresh strawberry from the market, enjoying each sweet, tart bite. I felt healing happening within myself: a feeling of abundance, an easing of scarcity. Napa’s market shows that when we prioritize the dignity and wellbeing of our most vulnerable community members, especially during times of societal upheaval, there’s healing to be found for everyone.
