Farmers Market
Larry Tumlin has been cooking and prepping food behind the scenes at the University of Maryland for 23 years. Now he’ll be doing it in front of an audience.
Tumlin is the new manager of this university’s farmers market, and as part of an expansion of the market’s offerings, he will be putting on a cooking demonstration every Wednesday at noon to show off produce from vendors and Terp Farm.
“We have a spotlight on them, and we ask them to provide us with a product that we will derive a recipe from,” said Tumlin, who has held a variety of positions at the university, such as production manager, catering chef and manager chef.
At the three-year-old market’s spring opening yesterday, patrons watched Tumlin prepare a spring salad. He discussed how to handle the food and bring out the flavors as he sliced and diced. Junior Laura Dally stayed for the demo’s entirety to pick up a few pointers.
“I live in an apartment and I am learning to cook right now, so I wanted to learn some tips to eat healthier,” said Dally, a computer science major.
Besides Tumlin’s cooking demo, the market looks similar to seasons past. A variety of booths with fresh fruits, meats, pastries and other local food products lined the sidewalk outside of Cole Field House, though this year’s market boasts more local vendors, including Cove Point Winery, Southern Maryland’s oldest winery, and Dress It Up Dressing, which sells four vinaigrette dressings based on family recipes.
“It’s a great market to tap into,” said Nick Stavely, a salesman for Dress It Up Dressing. “You can access all the students, faculty and staff and still the town of College Park. It’s good to have a showing at the state’s flagship university.”
However, the biggest changes to the market are internal.
For its first three years, the market was managed by a collaborative committee, said Allison Lilly, Dining Services sustainability and wellness coordinator and a former co-chair of the farmers market committee. The committee contracted out a market manager to recruit vendors.
But when the grant money that paid for the contract ran out this year, the committee needed another source of funding, which led it to Dining Services, Lilly said.
Dining Services sponsored the market last year, and with the university’s hiring freeze mandate, which went into effect in December, Lilly said Dining Services staff taking over full-time made the most sense.
“It seemed more logical to have an internal staff member to manage the market rather than having an external contractor and trying to manage the budget a little more closely on campus,” she said.
While the management has changed, Lilly said many of the stakeholders who were involved in the committee are still engaged in the market’s operation.
Like people stopping by at the demonstration yesterday, managers will come and go, but Tumlin and the farmers market will still be providing food for the university.
