I’m reading Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” the story of how the author and her family spend one year living only on food either raised in their own neighborhood or grown themselves.  It’s entertaining and inspiring.  One paragraph jumped out at me, and I’ve read it over and over again.  “‘Local grown’ is a denomination whose meaning is incorruptible.  Sparing the transportation fuel, packaging and unhealthy additives is a compelling part of the story, but the plot goes well beyond that.  Local food is a handshake deal in a community gathering place.  It involves farmers with first names, who show up week after week.  It means an open-door policy on the fields, where neighborhood buyers are welcome to come have a look, and pick their food from the vine.  Local is farmers growing trust.”

It’s the best description I’ve seen yet of the power of the local food movement.  Why?  Because it goes beyond the data and nails the emotional side.  And it captures so much of what we at Abe’s Market aspire to be.

No, we’re not only about food, though we have plenty of it, and we’re always adding more.  And given that we’re an ecommerce site, we’re not really all about local, though we’ll be unveiling some ideas to help buyers support sellers in their area.  But what we want to be is the online marketplace where transactions feel like “a handshake deal in a community gathering place.”  It’s why we’ve gathered fantastic sellers from around the country – sellers who actually make their products with care and passion and attention to quality, sellers with first names whose stories we promote so that buyers can make that connection to the people who make their products.  We want to create an “open-door policy” on our figurative fields, where “neighborhood buyers are welcome to come have a look.”  And we want to establish trust – trust between buyers and sellers and trust between both our buyer and seller communities and us.  When you buy or sell on Abe’s Market, you can and should feel like you’re entering into a handshake deal with a trustworthy partner in a community gathering place.

We may not be all the way there yet, but we shoot for it every day.  We want you, as members of the “community gathering place” to help us.  What can we do to make Abe’s Market better?

We are an apple eating family. One of my favorite snacks is mixing sliced apples in yogurt, adding granola and topping the bowl with honey. We will pick some up as snacks for the kids, bake them in pies – nothing out of the ordinary. They rank right below watermelon and grapefruit on my top ten list. That is until I was reminded about the amount of pesticide that is needed to grow the average apple – see #7 in this article titled “The 7 Foods Experts Won’t Eat” http://bit.ly/7VrP3C

Granted we mostly buy organic apples but before I find myself eating a conventional apple I have taken to scraping them with a knife and marveling at all of the yellowish build up. Simply don’t like pesticide in my pie.

We at Abe’s Market are about feeling good. Feeling good about what you buy because it is natural and made by someone who you can get to know and hopefully feel their passion for what they do.

We try not to push fear. By fear  I am referring to the practice of focusing on how the less-than-natural elements will effect you and your family eg toxins in baby bottles. Fear is a fantastic motivator, think of what was going through your head when you last bought insurance, an electronics warranty or paid for a top notch lawyer.

Because of our excitement around feeling good, I felt great when I saw this quote from Liz and Holly, the co-founders of our new seller Bag The Habit “It’s not about hating plastic; it’s about loving your reusable bag.” A solid reusable bag makes me feel great about not wasting plastic or paper AND they are simply a better way to carry groceries – they handle more and have little chance of breaking. They are an improvement over how I used to function (this is where the feel good part comes in and we didn’t even need to mention that 300 billion plastic bags per year have to end up being buried somewhere;).

The eco-dough made by eco-kids has me feeling the same way, it is a whole lot of fun and an improvement over competitors- plus I have had a chance to get to know Cammie and her husband Kip and I feel good about supporting them.

I love working on Abe’s Market.  After 10 years in Fortune 500 companies, it’s invigorating to wake up every day and be passionate about what I do.  (Note: I will not bash my time in big companies; I learned a ton and worked with some brilliant mentors, but I can’t say that I woke up too often feeling energized to get to work.)  On the surface, I love working a 5-minute walk from home and being in control of my work environment and work hours.  I work more than ever, but it just doesn’t feel like it.  More important than that surface stuff is that I’m inspired by the people I interact with every day.  Each seller on Abe’s Market has a unique story.  In most cases, these sellers started to make their products in reaction to a personal need or the needs of a loved one.  Two Moms In The Raw and Good For You Girls are just two such examples.  Another theme among Abe’s Market sellers is that many of these people left longtime and once secure jobs to go off and start a company they could be passionate about.  And I am yet to speak to one who regrets his or her decision.

Lisa, our new Community Manager (welcome aboard, Lisa!), recently shared an amazing 2-minute video with me.  It captures the essence of the liberation and exhilaration that the subjects feel after leaving the security of their careers and reinventing themselves – in some pretty dramatic ways.  Worth the view….

http://www.lemonademovie.com/

At Abe’s Market, we love stories of people who follow or find their passion.  If you have such a story, we’d love to hear it.