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We always talk about our vendors and what's happening at Tomball Farmers Market and local events happening around us but we rarely talk about what we do and how we got our start. As we head into our 17th year as a true farmers market I thought I would give everyone a behind the curtain look at what all we do, how we are involved in the community and how we advocate for law changes on the state and federal levels for small farmers, ranchers and local entrepreneurs getting their start. Tomball Farmers Market is featured in this month's Shout Out HTX magazine with our Market Manager, Amanda Kelly. She talks about all things TFM and showcases Old Town Tomball. https://shoutouthtx.com/meet-amanda-kelly/ For those who I haven’t had the pleasure to meet, my name is Amanda Kelly, and I am the Market Manager for Tomball Farmers Market. Those who know me, know I am not who you want in your garden as I excel at killing even air plants. So how in the world did I get here? Luckily, I am pretty good at growing people and bringing out the best in them. For 20 plus years I specialized in corporate level restaurant training, public restaurant restructuring and public relations. Our teams were sent in to fix failing and under performing restaurants to help them be successful again. Basically our teams were Restaurant Rehab before it became a reality show. We would spend 8 to 16 months fixing each struggling corporate restaurant all over the country. My responsibilities mostly consisted of retraining and hiring staff and working with the local Health Departments to get the business back in compliance. I also worked closely with local Chambers of Commerce and local businesses around town to repair the restaurants image as their public relations and marketing specialist. And it was a great way to see the country and I loved my job. That all changed in 2010, my husband suffered a traumatic brain event with a 1% chance of survival. And luckily, he beat those odds and had to learn to talk, walk and hold a pencil again. He finally got to come home with us but could no longer work due to all the frontal lobe damage done, he couldn’t be left home alone, so I had to stay home with him and the kids as insurance wouldn't cover home health care. He was an enigma to the doctors as there was no visible sign of why the TBI event happened. So, I started researching and kept finding university studies around the world pointing to the food we eat having potentially contributed to it. I started really paying attention to research around eating local, water and soil health. This lead us to becoming part of Tomball Farmers Market as patrons, working for vendors and volunteering. Eventually leading to my current job. I got to see firsthand how eating local helped my husband’s quality of life in dramatic ways. This is why I am extremely passionate about our little farmers market, our farmers and helping the community have access to local healthy foods. We are ranked as one of the top all Local Farmers Markets in the State of Texas. Pretty impressive for our small towns farmers market. We have worked hard to earn 4 certifications as an all-local farmers market from the USDA, Texas Department of Agriculture, GO Texan and Harris County Public Health. This means we are required to maintain 51% local farm to non-farmer vendor ratios year-round and all our vendors must handcraft or locally prepare their products within 180 miles of Tomball to qualify with us. To help meet those requirements we have category limits so there aren’t too many of the same products at the market and offer wide range of diverse and ever-changing products for customers. This business model has fostered quicker small business growth. Our goal is to have small businesses outgrow us within 2 and half years and have the education and resources they need to be successful in brick and mortars in Tomball. There are over 20 businesses within that have outgrown us in and around Tomball, Houston and Amazon. This growth helps us to then bring in new vendors and help them achieve success too without having long wait lists. Our mission is to advocate for our local farmers and be able to provide them with the space and resources to help create generational wealth while also helping local small businesses grow. We work to help educate the community on the importance of eating locally sustainably sourced foods and local water and soil health. Let’s get back to our farmers and why are local farmers important. Big Agriculture Farms strip our land of our healthy topsoil and water pollution by over farming and using harmful pesticides, fertilizers and injecting harmful animal hormones and injecting the foods the animals eat with harmful growth hormones and other harmful farming practices. While Local Farmers use sustainable practices ensuring the health of our water, soil and animals and therefore the foods we put on our tables. One of the biggest challenges we are facing today though in farming is our farmers are aging out and there are fewer and fewer of the younger generation who want to go into agriculture. We need to inspire and nurture the next generation of farmers. It’s small local farmers, not big AG who will heal our soil and help the environment. Because of this we advocate at the state and federal levels to get laws changed to help our farmers and our small businesses flourish. Tomball Farmers Market is working to help in this in two ways. We have created a Student Gardening Scholarship for middle school and high school students to encourage the younger generation to get passionate about farming and ranching. Last year we were able to provide several students with all the tools necessary to start their own gardens as well as ongoing education and resources to help them along the way. We are also working with Harris County Precinct 4 and Texas A&M’s AgriLife Extension community garden projects like Battleground to Breaking Ground. A federal program helping connect and educate Veterans with local farmers mentors and providing community garden spaces where Veterans and local community members can grow their own vegetables, plants, herbs and creating much needed therapy outlets and jobs in our community. Our goal is to help them to be able to have sustainable income and help them meet their needs. We have our annual Harvest of Hearts Fundraiser on February 21st, coming up which we would love to see you all at that will help us raise money for both of these projects. Without local farmers and ranchers, we face not only major food insecurities and economic hardships but soil increased flooding issues and poor soil and water quality due to run off. It’s incredibly important to not only educate the community and enable and impower the next generation of farmers to get passionate but advocating for change on the local, state and federal levels to protect our communities and improve our health and the communities we live in. Tomball Farmers Market Goals:
 Vendors NOT Attending 1/11/25
Rain Song Farms Backyard Bounty Moss Family Farm Dapper Goat Dairy Little Diamnds |
