Green City Market vendors bring sustainability and community to Chicago.

Bustling crowds of people flock to dozens of stalls, decorated with vibrant fruits, foods and flowers. After each stand you pass, you’re greeted with a new, irresistible aroma. You’ve arrived at none other than Chicago’s Green City Market, a farmer’s market dedicated to supporting sustainable farmers, educating our community and expanding access to locally grown food. 

The market supports 55 sustainable farms and food producers and donated over 16,700 pounds of food to local pantries and mutual-aid groups in 2023. The market also participates in Illinois’ SNAP program, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides assistance to low-income households to afford more healthy foods. This is the 25th year Green City Market has been serving the Chicago community, and its vendors have come to form a community of like-minded people who are passionate about food justice and fostering a connection between consumers and farmers who grow their food.

René Gelder 

Rene Gelder. Photo by Morgan Kirsch.

René Gelder skillfully runs her 60-acre Ellis Family Farms in Benton Harbor, Michigan. This farm has been lovingly passed down through six generations of Ellises. Gelder’s maternal great-grandparents immigrated from Ukraine and northern Poland to the US, and her paternal great-grandparents from Wales, in the 1920s. They eventually settled in Michigan and grew a thriving farming business. Gelder grew up on her family’s farm in Benton Harbor, Michigan, cultivating simple crops and a true passion for experimental agriculture. The family has been successfully spreading their goods among Chicago farmers markets since the ‘80s. 

Rene Gelder fixes a sign at her Ellis Family Farm’s stand at Lincoln Park’s Green City Market. Photo by Morgan Kirsch.

Gelder’s father, Jerry Ellis, ran the then-80-acre farm that grew mostly tomatoes, until he could no longer keep up with the labor-intensive work and the effects of his dementia. Gelder took over shortly after. Beyond her passion for growing things, Gelder felt a calling to grow young minds, teaching at schools until she began taking over farm operations. Despite running the farm today, she has never given up her passion for educating, especially when it comes to innovative and sustainable agricultural practices. 

“I like talking to the people to help educate them. I think there’s a very large, tremendously large, disconnect throughout the United States of what is truly going on. You have big agriculture, and unfortunately, I think that clouds what the rest of us are doing,” she said. 

After she took over, their farm experienced some drastic changes. Today, their crops have diversified well beyond tomatoes; they now produce various fruits and vegetables, including asparagus, rhubarb, strawberries, cherries, apricots, blueberries, blackberries, nectarines, peaches, apples, grapes, pears, chestnuts and raspberries. 

Ellis Family Farm apple selection at Lincoln Park’s Green City Market. Photo by Morgan Kirsch.

She also made changes to how she and her family cultivated the crops. Gelder described how it is common in commercial farming to replant raspberry bushes every seven or eight years because older bushes tend to become less productive over time. Gelder helped create a new system that extended the productivity of the bushes to around 13 years before they needed to be replanted. 

Gelder is innovating in agriculture and has no plans of slowing down, approaching each obstacle as a new opportunity for growth in more ways than one. 

Irving Tellez

Irving Tellez. Photo by Morgan Kirsch.

Irving Tellez has worked at Baked Cheese Haus, a Wisconsin-based specialty and artisanal cheesemaking business, making their signature sandwiches at different Chicago markets. The sustainable cheesemaking company is known for its sandwiches made with Alpine-style raclette, a Swiss cheese dish scraped right off the wheel. 

A Baked Cheese Haus worker makes a sandwich with Alpine-style raclette cheese for a customer at Green City Market. Photo by Morgan Kirsch.

 So far, Tellez has had a great time working at Green City Market. 

Customers line up to try Baked Cheese Haus’s sandwiches at Lincoln Park’s Green City Market. Photo by Morgan Kirsch.

“I love being here. I love the people. I love being a part of this,” he said. 

Originally from Michoacán, Mexico, Tellez has been living in Chicago for ten years with his brothers and mother. Before working at Baked Cheese Haus, Tellez worked at an airport and spent some time in the food-service industry, which led him to a position with the Baked Cheese Haus. He has grown to love being a part of the food-making process. The rest of his family, including aunts, uncles and grandparents, are all back in Mexico, and he deeply enjoys his yearly visits. Tellez’s family welcomes the cheese he brings back home from work. 

LeeCox Omollo 

Leecox Omollo. Photo by Morgan Kirsch.

Leecox Omollo and his wife, Martha Itulya-Omollo, founded Kikwetu Kenya Coffee Company, a Kenya-born, Chicago-made coffee company, dedicated to selling the best Kenyan coffee and pastries. Omollo also aspires to foster human connection with customers through the store in an effort to recreate the sense of community he had growing up. He recalled that feeling from his youth. 

“It was very clear that the person next to you cared. The shopkeeper knew who you were,” he said. 

The Mandazi pastries he sells through Kikwetu are the same ones he sold as a child at school.

“It taught us life skills in terms of being able to fight through problems, fight through pain, solve things and so forth,” he said. 

Omollo wanted to emphasize that his story is not only his own, but one from generations of his family. He explained how everyone has a story and something to overcome in their lives, and that is the human experience. 

Kikwetu Coffee has been operating since 2014, starting as an ecommerce business before expanding into farmers markets and catering across Chicago. Their first storefront is in SPF, Chicago’s largest indoor pickleball facility. 

Lines form outside the Kikwetu Coffee stand at Lincoln Park’s Green City Market. Photo by Morgan Kirsch.

What began as a fun way to hang out and spend time together became a living, breathing fantasy to connect the food and culture of Kenya with the diverse groups of people in Chicago. Omollo described how there are so many negative depictions of non-Western countries, so he wanted to tell a positive story of his culture. They have dedicated their business to bringing strangers and different people together, emphasizing people’s similarities over their differences and creating bonding experiences. 

As they continue to expand their business, Omollo strives to enable the growth and profit of their business while preserving the closeness or the personal feel of the human connection they have always sought to achieve. 

Sam Abrams

Sam Abrams. Photo by Morgan Kirsch.

Sam Abrams lived in North Carolina before he came to Chicago, looking for jobs in sustainable agriculture. He saw an opening with Seedling Farms, an environmentally certified and award-winning, biodiverse fruit orchard in South Haven, Michigan. 

Seedling Farm’s smoothie stand at Lincoln Park’s Green City Market. Photo by Morgan Kirsch.

Abrams works in produce distribution for Seedling, and he particularly enjoys the camaraderie at Green City Market. He praised the market’s emphasis on food accessibility and the importance of knowing where your food comes from during such high inflation.

Abrams’s path to sustainable agriculture was not a straight one. He initially studied law and went into nonprofits, working with an Americorps company before joining Seedling Farms. He had a difficult time moving forward in the nonprofit sector, and eventually grew an interest in learning more about sustainable agriculture.

Abrams came to Chicago on a trip around a decade ago and felt he could see himself living in the city before eventually being given an opportunity to move. He also came to Chicago looking for a fresh start on his own and a change of scenery after having gotten tired of living in North Carolina. He was drawn to the “genuine Midwest kindness,” which he contrasted with the more surface-level kindness he saw in the South. He found Chicago to be a welcoming place with kind people and was happy to have made the change. 

Though not all the vendors are from Chicago, they have fallen in love with the city and its people, inspired to share their unique, sustainable foods and knowledge of their craft to a community they deeply respect. The vendors have forged bonds with each other based on the strong foundations of a shared mission. Along the way, they also bonded with the community that shows up to the market every year, showing that they, too, stand by the market’s values. It has become clear to me that the diverse people drawn to the market, whether they be vendors or consumers, share an unspoken pact: to grow food and grow together.

Header by Morgan Kirsch