Every week in Old Mandeville, the gray stucco train depot comes alive for the Mandeville Trailhead Community Market. Sponsored by the city, it saw about 24,000 visitors last year and hosts about 60 vendors every Saturday.
The market is a place to buy local crafts, soap, honey, baked goods and plants. Plus, it provides many with companionship and community.
Linda Grant, of Hammond, has baked pies and sweets and sold them at the market for more than ten years. She said everyone has their own methods of set-up, but she has refined hers over the years. She loaded up all of her pies and baked goods on a little metal wagon and pulled them up to her spot in the pavilion at the Mandeville Trailhead. She carefully arranged her bourbon pecan and fresh apple pies, two of her staples, and explained what inspired her baking.
“I try to bake stuff that really brings back memories, like the banana pudding and bread pudding for the New Orleans people. Banana pudding is kind of southern, like where I’m from, Tennessee, but the bread pudding is more from this area. Then the spinach bread, from the Virginia area, so it’s just, you know, a collection,” said Grant.
Eileen Ebel has been one of Linda’s regular customers for years, though Linda never knew her last name. That’s kind of what’s special about the relationships at the market — it feels like family.
Ebel said buying spinach bread from Grant on Saturday mornings was about more than just a tasty breakfast. “It’s comfort food. It’s wonderful. It’s my favorite,” said Ebel.
This was one of Grant’s last days at the Mandeville Market so she wrote down the recipe for Ebel’s favorite spinach bread, brought her two fresh loaves, and even supplied two aluminum pans of the same size for her to bake them in.
“And that’s why I love Linda,” said Ebel. “She’s a great chef but she’s the sweetest person."
Market organizer Donna Beakley said these relationships are an important part of market, which is not only a community gathering place but a community in itself. For some, it’s not even about making money.
Beakley said, “I had a vendor who didn’t sell anything for months, and I’m like, ‘Why are you even out here? I don’t want you to feel like you’ve got to come.’ She said ‘Oh no, this is my therapy, I love being out here, just meeting people. If I don’t sell anything, that’s fine, it’s worth being out here!’”
Jay Babin has sold his woodworking at the market for 11 years. He used to make early American furniture, like toy boxes and benches, but now he only brings his big, bright, colorful birdhouses, “because I’m getting to be an old guy.”
He said he doesn’t sell much, but that doesn’t matter.
“I lost my wife last year, and this keeps me going. Camaraderie, meet a lot of nice people, and it just gives me something to do... I make two birdhouses every week to give away to children. If a child catches my eye, I’ll give them a birdhouse,” explained Babin.
Just down the path, nursery owner Desiree Stone sold potted herbs, vegetables and flowers. She said she’s one of the vendors who counts on the money they make to supplement their income, but she gets more out of it.
“I find pleasure in teaching people how to be successful in what they grow because it’s not easy, especially here in the south, in Louisiana, where the humidity is so high,” said Stone. She explained that many people feel uncomfortable asking questions about plants or don’t know what the right questions are, “So I tell people in advance what things they should watch for and how to care for their plant. That’s a win-win situation — they’re successful, they come buy more plants.”
Grant said, though she spent several days of baking preparing for the market each week, and it’s a lot of work, “I can’t say that I come for the money. The money is easy to enjoy, I can go out two or three times a week. But my thing is the social and loving to bake.”
Beakley said organizing the market is a lot of work, too. She often takes calls and texts at 3 a.m. when there is bad weather, and juggles scheduling the 60-plus vendors on her own. “It is a labor of love, and the reason that I do it is because I feel like this is just one big family here,” said Beakley.
For Grant, it comes naturally. “Growing up, as ten- and eleven- and twelve-year-olds, we was seven children so my mother would cook a pot of spaghetti or a pot of potato soup or a pot of beans and if we wanted dessert then I’d have to bake a dessert. Now I have to tell you, those first deserts were kind of bad! A lot of cake mix boxes and brownies and just that sort of thing.”
Then someone walked up and stood at Grant’s table, indicating she wanted to buy some eggs, and Grant called out, “Hey Pearl, come here! Are you wanting eggs?” and got to work.
Support for Northshore Focus comes from the Northshore Community Foundation.
