Harlem Cyclist Builds Local Farmers Market

Between a parking lot and a gas station vendors carry stacks of bundled carrots, crates of celery, piles of onions and garlic to their tables. On Bronxdale Avenue in the Bronx, The Uptown Good Food market is just getting set up.

As the elevated 5 train rumbles by, a cyclist rides towards the farmers, leans her bike against a tree, and unties a box of eggs and a big plastic tote.

“I bike everywhere,” says Judi Desire, 44, opening the tote to reveal jars of pickled okra, green beans, cucumbers, and a dozen blocks of cheese she places on a small folding table. 

She is so often on her bicycle that when people see her without it, they take notice.

“The community members make me laugh when they see me walking and they’re like, what’s wrong?” 

Desire with her bike and saddle bags, setting up for the Farmers’ Market

Even though it’s barely 40 degrees, Desire wears a thin gray sweatshirt over a yellow t-shirt, with black biking pants and green Converse, her hair exploding behind a small black headband.

It’s the last Sunday of the Uptown Good Food Market’s second season. For many vendors, it’s a family affair. The Martinez family farm, House of Greens, has three generations of farmers harvesting, washing, and organizing before each market.

Desire has a familial attitude herself, greeting patrons by name as they walk – or bike – by. She checks up on people. “How’s your leg?” She asks a produce vendor, who has a slight limp from a recent injury. One marketgoer, who picks up a red jar with a pickled egg inside, asks for his favorite Sauerkraut. “Our vendor ran out,” exclaims Desire. “But I’ll see if I can get more next year.” 

She stands under a pop-up tent in front of a pink banner featuring a giant broccoli, Christmas tunes playing in the background. On a folding table in front of her, she has a gray and yellow iPad for each of two different payment systems, and a stack of SNAP bucks for patrons who use Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. She’s almost always smiling, 

For Desire (pronounced Deh-zi-ray), this is the second year organizing this Bronx farmers market, an initiative that emerged from lessons learned on her bike: that fresh healthy food tastes better and can make the difference between 20 and 40 successful miles.

“I wanted people to know what real food looks like,” says Desire, inspired by experiences abroad that showed her the possible abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables. 

What began as a farm stand has since grown into a market with a half-dozen vendors, plus two produce subscriptions called Community Supported Agriculture, or CSAs. Desire has also organized a farmers’ market in Harlem that’s even bigger. Both help farmers sell their produce at better prices, and community members access much needed greens.

She’s a front-end web developer by trade, so organizing farmers markets wasn’t part of a grand plan. Nor was biking solo across a dozen countries. But Desire doesn’t tend to think that far ahead. As she once said in a Zoom seminar, “My model is: plan nothing, expect everything.”

The winding path towards food advocacy started almost 15 years ago when Desire branched out from her traditional travel destinations. 

Having been raised in Harlem in a Haitian household, her early travels were to visit family outside Port-au-Prince. Her adult vacations remained Caribbean-based, focusing first on resorts and cruises until she found an alternative. “I think I’m a hostel girl,” she decided.

When a coworker mentioned the many opportunities for two-wheeled adventures in Europe, she learned to bike, with friends holding her saddle as she wobbled back and forth.

On that first day she rode across the Brooklyn Bridge. Since then, she’s taken months-long global tours over hundreds of miles. Desire has ridden everywhere from South Africa to Brazil, Mauritius to the Galapagos, biking 60 miles a day, all her belongings in two panniers mounted on her bike.

To scroll through Desire’s Flickr is to tour the world – poetry clipped to a clothesline before a Peruvian church. Cuban commuters in a horse-drawn carriage, a woman serving french fries and salad at a dining room table in Brazil. 

In recent years, though, the scenes are increasingly local: Judi’s folding bike posed in front of the Harlem 125th street subway sign, kids with painted faces, a row of bulbous apples at the Bronx Farmers Market. 

2017 was the first year Desire stopped touring extensively. Her mother Ann Marie, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s five years earlier, needed more care. “Promise me,” her mother had told her, “When it gets bad, you have to take care of me.” So, she did.

For three years, Desire reshuffled work commitments around her mother’s care. 

“Number one, I’m Haitian,” Desire explained. “‘Nursing home’ is not even translated in French or Creole. The word literally is not in the vocabulary.” 

Doctors insisted Ann Marie eat healthily, which Desire found increasingly difficult. Uptown residents had few healthy options and during the pandemic, what was available became more expensive. 

Desire’s mother died in 2021, in her arms. “That’s how it was supposed to be. Being loved and knowing she wasn’t alone,” said Desire.

The lessons of that time stayed with her, including the challenges of finding fresh food in her community. She decided to change that.

“If you want change, you have to build, you have to make the change,” says Desire. Reflecting on her community efforts, “I call it kind of like my silent protest,” she says.

With that, Uptown Good Food was born, bringing local farmers and merchants to communities in Harlem and the Bronx.

After one year, she’s eager to ensure the communities know what is available to them. “I’m gonna market the hell out of it. I gotta get the whole community out,” she said enthusiastically a few days before the year’s last market.

On the eastern side of St. Nicholas Park in Harlem the next evening, Desire appears as a silhouette with a frizzy ponytail stapling a flier onto a tree. “End of season market” it says at the top. Desire leans almost horizontally over her bike holding a kids-size stapler to reach the trunk under the streetlights. 

 “That staple gun could be coming in handy right now,” she says as the flier falls off the tree, staples bent against the bark.

Still, Desire’s marketing worked.

Desire helps a buyer purchase fresh vegetables

“It’s a blessing,” says Dulce Maria that Saturday. She comes to the Harlem market every week. Back in Ecuador fresh produce was easier to come by, she says. It’s important to have the same options just a few blocks from her home in New York City. 

Jolina “Jojo” Ruth Cogen, who calls herself a speaker and community advocate, as well as a real-estate broker, lives right across the street from the market in Harlem.

“This is my girl! I fought for her!” She says of Desire. 

“We’re promoting farmers, everyday people, everyday Americans.”

Considering that Desire chose to study computer science because her guidance counselor told her she wouldn’t have to deal with people, it's remarkable how she now plays such a central role for so many in her life.

“She’s extremely sociable,” says friend and former colleague Mike Samm. He was one of the people holding Desire’s saddle when she learned to ride a bike. 

“Through her own determination, she’s made herself into a very effective group organizer.” He says, citing art shows with friends from her bike expeditions, former colleagues, artists.  

“As someone who grew up as Black and dark skinned and a woman,” says Desire, “you always have this kind of, ‘Will people accept me, what will they think about me’ – this kind of racial fear.”

What did bike touring teach her? “Everything.” 

She has knocked on strangers’ doors to ask for – and receive – lodging. She’s eaten at their dining room tables. She has learned that there is kindness in the world and that food is her love language. 

Now, she hopes to return the favor by using her own land to cultivate things she thinks her market is missing, and to more deeply connect with what she provides her neighborhood. She has already attended a Farm School summer program in 2023 and an Urban Agriculture program. She’s started looking for land upstate she can steward.

Desire’s bike is covered in stickers – “Show me helmet hair” and “Kangaroos next 14km” – from her many travels. But the sticker right beneath the handlebars is almost worn out from use.

It says, “Dream Big. Dream Big. Dream Big.”

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church Survives 200 Years in West Harlem by Adapting to Change

Published in Columbia News Service

The basement of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in West Harlem is nothing like the worship space above it. The white, underground room smells of linoleum and popcorn from Friday night movie screenings. Upstairs, on Sunday mornings, hymns echo off a vaulted ceiling while the sunshine through stained-glass windows shoots multi-colored light beams onto the floor. 

Both spaces represent how St. Mary’s has served its neighbors during 200 years in the same location on West 126th  Street near Amsterdam Avenue in the Manhattanville neighborhood. 

But with declining attendance and aging worshippers, churches throughout the neighborhood face a crisis. Some congregations have shut down. Others have sold their properties to real estate developers with the promise of gaining worship space in new residential apartment buildings. Even at St. Mary’s, Sunday services are shared with St. Martin’s & St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, whose own building in Central Harlem has fallen into disrepair.

“Everyone has to have a place to call home,” the Rev. Mary Foulke, the rector of St. Mary’s, said in an interview following a recent Sunday service. The Washington, D.C., native has led the congregation since 2014 and is a vocal advocate for the community.

Judi Johnson has attended services at the church since the late 1950s. Freddi Brown-Carter, who joined the congregation 10 years ago, said she considers herself a relative newcomer. 

Brown-Carter volunteers to stock the community fridge. “Work here is like planting the seeds of trees you’ll never see,” she said. Brown-Carter is proud to be a part of the church’s two century-old legacy.

Freddi Brown-Carter, in front of St. Mary’s garden.

The founders of St. Mary’s first met at a schoolhouse on Dec. 18, 1823, in what was then the village of Manhattanville, to create a church for the people there. After deciding on a name and choosing their leadership, Jacob Schieffelin, one of the two wardens selected, donated the plot of land that would soon become St. Mary’s. As Harlem’s demographics continue to shift, St. Mary’s still stands on those few acres of what was once Upper Manhattan farmland. Schieffelin’s seventh great grandson is still involved in the church, according to its website.

The keys dangling from his hip betray Kym Roberts’ deep involvement with St. Mary’s. “Mr. Kym,” as he is known, opens and closes the doors each day, cleans the gutters, answers the phone and welcomes worshippers from morning until night. They call him the heart of the church. “I practically grew up going to church,” he said. 

Roberts is concerned about the closing of other congregations. “It’s not good,” he said. “We’re doing our best to survive.”  

Kym Roberts in St. Mary’s worship space.

The key to the survival of St. Mary’s is its service to the neighborhood, said William Roberts, who helps to organize movie nights and outreach to the homeless community. “It doesn’t matter who you are,” he said. “It matters if you’re human and you’re in need and that’s it.” 

Longevity requires adaptation. In addition to movie nights, the church runs a food pantry and thrift shop, offers tai chi classes, dance space and free medical clinics. St. Mary’s also provides a place for persons experiencing homelessness to receive mail. 

At a recent Sunday service, the 20 or so worshippers wore masks, the seats socially distanced. Live music was accompanied by a slick bilingual slide presentation. Virtual lectors read the Gospel of Matthew from their little Zoom squares. 

The bowed heads were mostly gray-haired. Congregant Charon Hartley and her 22-year-old son, two of the youngest people attending, said they represent the new generations of St. Mary’s worshippers.

Hartley wants her children to understand what it feels like to be a part of a church community. “It’s this feeling like I want to sing to the world, I want to help everybody,” she said. Hartley said she was overjoyed when her daughter called home from college and said “she found a home in a church.” 

In a black and white picture on the rectory’s mantle, St. Mary’s is almost unrecognizable from its original building. “The first church was made of wood, the second was brick, and now we have our current building,” Foulke said. “But regardless of the materials, the church is really the people who gather here.”

About the author(s)

Francisco Kilgore

Francisco Kilgore is a journalist and a graduate student at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

35th Annual Anti-Gentrification Block Party Celebrates Rent Strike Organizer

On September 18th, Tiemann Place celebrated its 35th annual block party, officially renaming the street “Tom DeMott Way" after a popular local organizer. 

The new street was filled for the occasion. A thick line of kids waited to get their faces painted, Pikachus and tigers were soon roaming the crowd. Merengue and Hip-Hop boomed from the DJ tent. Old timers watched in their chairs on the sidewalk, smoking cigars, and occasionally rising to dance to their favorite songs. 

Saad Khadim, Shaun Abreu, and Jamie DeMott, posing in front of the street’s new sign and art by a local artist reading “Harlem Is Not For Sale”

DeMott, who passed away in 2018, was one of five tenants who formed a tenant alliance in 1987, organizing a rent strike to demand repairs from negligent landlords. 

The strike was successful – according to the organizers the tenants were awarded more than $270,000 and landlords were forced to make necessary repairs. Since then, the block has held what’s formally known as the “West Harlem Coalition Anti-Gentrification Street Festival,” commemorating what the alliance accomplished. But the fight continues. Now with new challenges and new adversaries.

Of all the LLCs and investor groups that own property in the area, the Columbia University Trustees own the most. They have 168 residential buildings in their Morningside Heights portfolio, 9 of them on the Tiemann block. Controversial use of eminent domain and alleged displacement of 5,000 people has given more attention and anger to this local dominance. DeMott spoke out against Columbia’s expansions before he died, organizing protests against their growth into what the University prefers to call Manhattanville.

“People like to call it lots of other things, but this is Harlem,” says Patricia McClure, one of the original tenant protestors. She’s lived on the block for more than fifty years.

Although four of the five organizers have passed away, their legacy lives on. Saad Khadim, the last them, quipped that he’s “planning to live forever and so far it’s going fine.” He told the crowd that DeMott always emphasized “fighting for the last, the lost, and the least.” In other words standing up for the little guys.

But Columbia is big. Really big. And this time they didn’t succeed. 

The University’s webpage, “Columbia Neighbors,” describes “a long-standing history of working together with our local community.” 

Demott protested, telling the press that the Manhattanville expansion plan meant “the essential devastation of our community.” In 2007, the City Planning Commission voted 10-1 to pass the University’s $6 billion plans.

At this year’s celebration, DeMott’s son Jamie ran back and forth, shaking hands, taking photos, reflecting on the results of the expansion his father opposed. He greeted community members by name. “Columbia is coming and changing the whole community,” he said when he finally paused to give a speech in front of a sign that read “Harlem is Not For Sale.”

Along with a number of local activists, City Council member Shaun Abreu spoke about DeMott Sr.’s impact. “Tom only cared about one thing,” he said, “protecting vulnerable people in the face of powerful, powerful forces.”

For Wayne Bailey, Tiemann Place is more than just a street. “This is who I am. This is home,” he said. Bailey grew up on the block since 1967, and though he now lives in New Jersey, he came back across the river just for the annual celebration. Even so, he can see that the community is changing. He affirms that “Columbia made a dent in the culture.” Yet sitting in a chair on the sidewalk with his childhood friends, he recognizes it hasn’t completely gone away.

The party went on into the late afternoon, basketballs flying across the pavement as fathers and sons played together. But as the sun went down, a red and yellow bouncy castle jostled in the shade while Columbia’s new building, still incomplete, towered above the neighborhood.

A New Columbia University building rises on the new Manhattanville campus