Common Ground at the Market

Guest Opinion

By Cathye Williams | Sept. 20, 2025

Summer is certainly Michigan’s most popular season, but fall always comes in a close second. No big surprise. In autumn light, the air is golden. The woods and hillsides and the view out my window are pure Disney technicolor. My kitchen counters and my Instagram feed are both filled with the last of the local harvest—dark shiny eggplant, bright peppers, squash, and apples…even purple potatoes! There is no blank space anywhere inside or out, just color all around. Every fall I think that the universe is trying really hard to get my attention.

It’s news to no one that we are in an extraordinary moment. Whether we are struggling in our daily lives or frightened by the headlines and images in the media, many of us feel that we’re on the brink of any number of awful things: potential disasters in politics, public health, economics, and global conflict.

Podcasters and therapists alike advise us to take a break from the news. They urge us to stop scrolling, and to take care of ourselves and our relationships. To look inward for a moment and breathe. To look for places close to home where we can help and small things we can do.

They shouldn’t be too hard to find. After all, politics is just figuring out how to coexist and share where we live. It goes on every day in our communities. The economy is us working and spending and saving. Public health is trying to stay healthy and wanting others to be healthy too. The environment is the water coming out of our taps, the air going into our lungs, the food we eat, and everything in it.

Looking around my little world, instead of out at the whole big world, might just be the new perspective that I need. That we all need, if just for a minute. So I’m listening to the universe, putting down the phone, and skipping the news. I will try to breathe more, and look and listen and smell.

A trip to a fall farm market seems a great way to try out this new perspective. At the market you can share a little gossip, sign a petition, or pick up a flyer about a food drive or a township meeting. Most discussions here are civil and more likely to focus on the merits of Honeycrisp vs. MacIntosh, or how many tomatoes you still have time to can, than anything else. It’s hard to pick a fight when sampling cheese, or finding the perfect pumpkin, or to hate someone who shares your affinity for really fresh eggs.

On the economic side you’ll be spending some hard-earned cash, while others will be making a living and feeding their families. We make our community stronger, cleaner, and safer by being there together, supporting each other. We’re fueling the local economy and our bodies, with fresh nutrient dense food, likely produced using cleaner and more sustainable farming methods.

It’s also an economic reality that some of our neighbors can’t always access fresh local food. That’s where government and community organizations step in with great programs like Double Up Food Bucks, Farm to School, and public transportation to markets. There’s also Food Rescue, where surplus is rerouted to fill needs and reduce waste. We can help by telling our representatives at every level about the benefits all these programs bring to their constituents, including small farms and businesses.

At the market, we are all breathing the same air and likely drinking from the same watershed. We’re all going to take home and eat these fruits and vegetables that were grown in nearby soil. I’d say it’s a safe bet that 100 percent of us would like that air, soil, and water to be clean. Maybe we should talk about that, instead of so many other things.

As you’re deciding on which pie to take home from the market, you and the person next to you might both look up when you hear sandhill cranes flying overhead. Whether you speak of it or just listen, you’re sharing the experience of the birds’ flight together. How that person voted won’t matter as much on this small patch of common ground.

That’s when you’ll be glad you put away the phone, and why you’ll keep the windows down and the radio off for the ride home. You might stop somewhere to sip wine and enjoy the light a little longer, your mind still full of colors and smells and sounds (and plans for all that food).

Soon enough, you’ll be back reading the news and thinking about the huge challenges we face. Hopefully with rest, new perspectives, and some surprising allies we will start to find solutions. After all, it’s hard for anyone, red, blue, or purple, to experience the wonder of a Michigan harvest and not want to protect it.

Explore more at goodwillnmi.vomo.org/initiative/food-rescue; groundworkcenter.org; canr.msu.edu/grand_traverse/county-extension-office; gtrlc.org; nmeac.org; northwested.org/page/farm-to-school.

Cathye Williams is a local climate activist. She writes from the northern corner of Manistee County.