The enthusiasm will come through your ear phones when you hear this week’s guest, Allinee, “shiny” (small “s” on her website) Flanary, founder of Come Thru Market. If you check her website, you will see a true system of farm-to-market education and assistance focused on black and indigenous farmers and makers. There step-by-step tutorials to walk participants through the process of developing a product, readying it for market and getting into marketplaces. Also, shiny books private consultation sessions for those wanting to accelerate their projects. Come Thru Market is open the 1st and 3rd Monday of the month from May through October, 3-7pm. She also takes her Scrapberry farm to Portland’s Montavilla Market which is mainly the last Sunday of each month. Scrapberry Farm is shiny’s medicinal herb farm, which is heavy on spicy peppers. Her journey began with her own chronic diseases and disabilities. She pursued herbalism to heal herself and quickly discovered the false claims and fraud in the industry. Many products had the right idea for healing, but sourced their herbs from agribusiness entities which produced inferior herbs. To correct this, shiny started a small garden in the front yard of her Portland, Oregon home. The longer she tended the garden and consumed her own herbs, the more the neighbors in her community commented on how much better she looked and felt. They said she seemed “shinier”. At the time, she was a college professor and librarian, with absolutely no experience in farmers’ markets and no real desire to be part of them. But the black and brown herb growers and farmers she knew pushed her hard to pursue a path to farming. Her first foray was a small plot in a hilly, rather cold part of the state with a growing window of about two months. It helped her see that food was much more difficult to grow than herbs and they became her focus. So now that shiny had a product, where to sell it? And that was the entrée into farmers’ markets. Of course the path is never easy and she had to navigate state regulations while also having the FDA watching over her herb claims. At the same time, shiny wound up bumping into more and more black and brown farmers who needed help marketing their food and herb products. So as difficult as the regulations were, as complex as the steps to running a successful farmer’s market, shiny saw the big opportunity to put together a farmer’s market, complete with the “how to” educational component and offer a path for the farmers who were looking for a sales outlet. With all systems “go” in her comprehensive business, shiny juggling lots of plates but certainly has the energy to keep them in the air. The market: IG - @comethrupdx. Website: https://www.comethrupdx.org/home. IG - @scrapberryfarm, TW - @scrapberryfarm, TikTok - @scrapberryfarm. IG - @bbhx.pdx. IG - @racemefarmers .

Thank you for listening to The Meaningful Marketplace Podcast with your hosts, Sarah Masoni of Oregon State University's Food Innovation Center and Sarah Marshall, owner of Marshall's Haute Sauce. Connect with us on Instagram @meaningfulmarketplacepodcast. 

Call our hotline with questions for Sarah and Sarah at 503-395-8858. If you want to support our show, write us a review, share episodes with friends, or subscribe to our Patreon.

Producer: Sarah Marshall of The Joy of Creation Production House
Audio engineer, mixer, and podcast editor: Haley Bowers 
Show logo design: Anton Kimball of Kimball Design 
Production Coordinators: Dave Drusky