Stylz Mitchell and Olivia Mitchell. Tal Berkowitz Photos.
As a farmer, Sean-Gargamelli-McCreight knows a thing or two about the importance of ecological preservation.
“The word for soil— its root is humus— it’s the same Latin root as the word human,” he said. “We’re reconnecting with the place we all come from—which we need to nurture and which nourishes us.”
Gargamelli-McCreight is one of about a dozen vendors at the CitySeed Dixwell Q-House Farmers Market, held outside the Dixwell Community "Q" House at 197 Dixwell Ave. each Wednesday. Here, he represents the Benincasa Community, a Guilford-based Catholic commune and farm.
The farmers' market is run by CitySeed, an organization that also hosts the Sanctuary Kitchen and runs a Food Business Accelerator for aspiring food entrepreneurs. The market takes place at the Dixwell “Q House” Community House patio from 2 to 5 p.m. every Wednesday between June 18 and October 22.
According to Gargamelli-McCreight, the market is fundamentally different from shopping at a supermarket. It “is community over commerce,” he said. “In a supermarket, folks who are at the top of that pyramid are [profiting] more than other people. At a farmers market, it’s strictly egalitarian and distributive.”
Justin Farmer: “It’s a tremendous benefit… [that] there’s fresh fruit and vegetables at an affordable price."
At a booth nearby, Justin Farmer agreed on the market’s importance. Farmer is the lead organizer and founder of the Six Lakes Park Coalition. Founded in 2016, the coalition’s goal is to pressure the Olin Corporation into decontaminating a hundred-acre green space in southern Hamden, which organizers hope will ultimately become a public park.
He described Dixwell, the neighborhood where the market is located, as a “food desert,” a term for a place with relatively little access to food compared to surrounding areas.
“It’s a tremendous benefit … [that] there’s fresh fruit and vegetables at an affordable price,” he said.
Farmer added that the market is a key part of his organization’s outreach program. Six Lakes currently has 463 members, and Farmer says he was able to engage “a lot” of them through the farmers market.
Six Lakes started doing outreach at the farmers market in 2024, and initially sent representatives to all three of CitySeed’s markets throughout the city. Now, though, they only attend the Dixwell one.
“This year, we’re really focusing on getting Black and Brown community members’ input,” he said.
Antonio Campos of Mycelium Farm, one of the vendors at the farmers market.
As much as the Farmers Markets have helped grow Six Lakes, Farmer sees one downside limiting their potential for outreach: the five-o’clock closing time. “Because this is a working-class neighborhood, we’re just missing out on the opportunity to talk to more people,” he said.
Although the number of customers is often limited, vendors at the market like to trade, buy, and sell goods among themselves. Gargamelli-McCreight described the transactions between the vendors as a “sharing economy,” saying that as well as purchasing from each other, vendors often barter goods or give them to each other for free.
Anthony Fiore, who works at the market doing outreach for the social services organization R Kids, wandered between the tents looking for garlic for his marinara sauce.
The 84-degree heat made the event less than pleasant., but vendors seemed happy to be there. Olivia Mitchell and her brother Stylz Mitchell, who work for T&D Growers, brought water bottles and outfitted their tent with a plug-in fan.
Gargamelli-McCreight brought two coolers to keep his vegetables fresh. He noted that the heat, while annoying, wasn’t harmful to the veggies while they were growing.
“It’s been a pretty nice balance of heat and moisture," he said. "We’ve had a lot of rain this year, so we haven’t really had a drought like we have in the past. The combination of the two actually really helps with production."
This article comes from the 2025 cohort of the Youth Arts Journalism Initiative (YAJI). YAJI is a program in which New Haven, Hamden and West Haven Public Schools high school students pitch, write, edit and publish articles through the Arts Paper. This year, YAJI advisors include Arts Paper Editor Lucy Gellman and reporter and YAJI alum Abiba Biao. Tal Berkowitz is a rising junior at Wilbur Cross High School.