I met Ray Ray this summer through my good friends and neighbors at the McKibbin lofts. Not only is Ray Ray and amazing illustrator and artist, he has a strong integration with the cycles of food and its affects on ourselves and our environment. Ray Ray coordinates the composting efforts at the Fort Greene farmers market, so you can find him out there every Saturday until about noon.
This weekend I road out to the market to meet up with Ray Ray and get some veggies. Often times we’ll get food from a greenmarket and then have a McKibbin community dinner Sunday night. As I arrived, Ray Ray was just finishing up loading all the compost donations into the truck to be hauled off to a community garden. Over the summer, there was such an overabundance of compost that Ray Ray organized some of market farmers to take some of the compost back to use at their own farms.
After he’d finished loading, we made a round at the market. Ray Ray knows everyone by name at the market and if he doesn’t know them, he would by the end of the day. I see that as a sign of a true locavor. Someone that knows not only about where their food is coming from, but the people who are growing and distributing it. We visited his friend at DiPaola Turkeys. We had actually bought a turkey from this guy at the Union Square market for Thanksgiving. He was very adamant about the fact that their farm only had one type of livestock. I didn’t find out if this was for economic reasons or specific environmental or health reasons.
We got some apples for a pie from Red Jacket Orchards. The guy