Our group oral history project continues to make progress. Yesterday, I contacted Sarah Kirby from the Kirby Brothers Store. This is what I wrote:

Hi, I'm a long-time Medford resident and student at Rowan University. My research group is looking to record an "oral history" on a food-related topic. Our goal is to produce a documentary-style informative video about starting a farmers market. Since you are starting a whole new market, we would love to discuss this with you. We would only need an hour of your time to conduct an informal on-camera interview. We're looking to do this in the next week. We'll be publishing our research online, so it could even have the incidental effect of promoting your business. Let me know if this is something you would be interested in doing or if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Michael Youngkin

She promptly agreed to do the interview and we scheduled it for 6pm this Thursday! I also contacted a friend who studied film in college to see if he would be interested in helping us shoot the video. He has a really nice digital video SLR. We'll see about that.

And finally, this article was posted yesterday on the website of the local paper, The Central Record. It has basic information about the farm market, which isn't opening until May 20, outside the scope of our research. But we will have plenty to cover on the preparation before opening.

Our group met yesterday in class to solidify our research goals. We decided to pursue the idea I first suggested in this blog, interviewing Sarah Kirby to find out what goes into opening a new farmer's market. A behind the scenes look, if you will. We also decided that it would be helpful to think of our audience as people living in an area without access to a farmer's market who want to know more about starting one. This could lead to a simply informative project, or it could drift into the realm of persuading people to shop at farmer's markets. This is where we will let the research lead us.

Today, I will attempt to contact Sarah Kirby to set up a date for an interview. My group members have already come up with some good questions (here and here) in addition to the ones I posted here.

The other thing we decided was to present our findings in a documentary format. While I have the necessary equiptment, I would love to be able to use a better camera. Rowan's Campus Movie Fest is next week, which could help us to that end. The program allows students to borrow cameras and laptops to make short films to enter in a competition. While they require that entries be less than five minutes, we could create one version from our raw footage to enter in the competition. Alternatively, I have a friend who owns a DSLR video camera that shoots beautiful images. I am waiting to hear back to see if he would be interested in helping us shoot.

I forgot to mention in my last post that I'll be working with Darren Gaunt, Dave Lucas, and Stephanie "this was supposed to be my wedding" Bowser. Each has done some great work for the class, and I'm lucky to be working with them on the oral history project. On their websites, you will find their own blogs about our project, as well as some of their fantastic work in our class. I can't wait to start shooting some video as a team!

This morning, it came to me. The perfect idea for our oral history project! A prominent business owner with a long history in my hometown is starting up a farmers market on Main Street. Sarah Kirby has decided that every Saturday morning, her lot at Kirby Brothers Feed Store should come alive with merchants and shoppers, all within the shadow of the local Shop Rite. In Medford, the name Kirby is what Ben Franklin is to Philadelphia. There's the old Kirby's Mill, and now even an elementary school named after the family. Just last year, Sarah Kirby lost her father. It seems like now she is putting her effort into feeding Medford mouths with the food of local farmers, in a town on the edge of agrarian Burlington County. While I have never met Ms. Kirby, my father knows her and I am sure securing an interview would be no problem. My first impulse is to ask her how to put together a farmer's market. As a research question, this could lead to a very informative project.

I came up with some possible interview questions:
-Why have you decided to do this?
-How are you preparing?
-Who do you expect to shop here?
-What are your biggest concerns?
-In what ways has this been more challenging than you expected?
-What has been the biggest obstacle?
-How would you define sucess?
-What do you hope is the end result?

Additional aspects of the project could include a brief examination of the environment and culture: available food stores, shopping habits of citizens, income level, etc. Another interesting angle could be examining the potential effects of the proximity of Shop Rite, both on the new farmer's market and on Shop Rite itself. Regular Shop Rite customers could be "street interviewed."