Sad City Hartford: Historical Hartford Farmer's Markets

The original Lucky Taco truck!

We were recently contacted by Dan Gregory who works Hartford Food System and wanted to share some newly unearthed photographs of old Hartford Farmer's Markets with us. Most of these great pics date back to the 1970's and 1980's. Ahhh, the styles, the fashions. Who wouldn't have loved to be coming of age in the 70's and 80's? Well except for that whole lack of iPhones and instantaneous connectivity to almost any information you could possibly want. Still it had to be great to live at a time where you could impress girls by playing Asteroids, cigarettes didn't make you a social pariah, and the Mets were relevant. Just think of the joys and triumphs ahead for 1980's wunderkinds Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, and Mike Tyson.

Before we get into the pics, we asked Dan to share a brief history of Hartford Food System with us.

"Our organization in a nutshell: in regards to our history, we’ve been around since 1978. Our first program was the farmers market that we took over at the Old State House. Since then, where most of these photos are concerned, we ran the Main Street Market from 1991 until the early 2000s and the Holcomb Farm CSA farm, which we spun off a few years ago. Now, our programs currently include our Grow Hartford program (four urban farming plots within the City of Hartford), Healthy Food Retailer Initiative (where we help corner stores to improve their healthy food selections), the North End Farmers Market, and our new North Hartford Community Kitchen program, which helps participants how to cook with healthy techniques on a limited budget. Our main goal is to combat hunger and food security (or one’s access to healthy food) in Hartford through non-emergency, sustainable methods. We have much more information on our website about these programs at hartfordfood.org."