MARKET SHARE: Rebel Marketplace harvests unique community project in Aurora

‘My mom has been really encouraging. And she says that we should push to get a cafe at some point’

By CHRISTIAN ARNDT, StorySprint reporter for Sentinel Colorado (Via AP Storyshare)

The Sentinel Story Sprint is a statewide journalism project. Story Sprint brings students from Colorado State University, Community College of Aurora and Colorado College into the Aurora newsroom to cover local stories, alongside veteran journalists. Funded by a grant from the Colorado Media Project, the Sentinel Story Sprint provides a professional newsroom with emerging journalists, and emerging journalists with a professional newsroom.

AURORA | At a unique farmer’s market in a northwest Aurora park, Ron Johnson sits under an umbrella next to an ice box tied to his bike. He’s selling sorrel-flavored ice cream and Popsicles made from strawberries he grows inside his house.

When he started his business as a Rebel Marketplace vendor in Aurora’s Del Mar Park, he named it “Griot.” That’s the Portuguese word for a West-African bard or storyteller. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he joined the “rebels,” wanting to “bring back more hospitality and healthiness to eating.”

Johnson is one of dozens of vendors in the diverse collective who’ve created an unusual weekly market, often boasting homemade products and produce grown in backyards.

“The standard American diet has taken most of us away from our healthier delicious culinary roots,” the Aurora Public Schools nutritionist said. He’s a trained chef, too. “The American diet differs dramatically in quality from traditional and multicultural ways of eating including the traditions of the African diaspora.”

Farmer’s markets tend to boast the same spread of products: fresh produce and homemade confections. But the Rebel Marketplace represents something much more. This is much less a traditional farmers market, but a collective of local vendors looking out for their community. This is backyard to the tables of many looking out for one another.

Founding Principles

The Rebel Marketplace is the brainchild of James Grievous. Every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. he welcomes patrons visiting the market or hovers around his own vendor tent, “Rebels In The Garden.”

Recently, he was offering early carrots and radishes. The tent was created to follow an urban farming principle, which is the concept of creating gardens to grow fresh produce in urban settings like neighborhood backyards.

He started the project in 2015 with three of his kids and two of their friends.

“As they got older, in their early teens, we wanted to transition and teach them business skills and things like that to sell the produce from the work they’re doing,” Grevious said. “And so we went on Nextdoor and said, ‘Hey, we’re thinking about this idea with a farmer’s market here at Del Mar Park,’ and it kind of took off.”

The Rebel Marketplace began with only a handful of gardeners. Now it’s expanded to 28 vendors on a slow week. Each Saturday, there are food trucks, pottery vendors and even succulent stands, all originating from the Aurora area.

Resources for the would-be urban farmers

Grievous’s passion for the project has evolved into a nonprofit group called Urban Symbiosis — a program that utilizes a four-year process to help individuals looking to get into urban farming, which could eventually transfer into joining the Rebel Marketplace to sell crops.

The program donates $500 per year toward urban farmers looking to start their own business to cover seedlings, tools and raised beds. If they want to continue urban farming, the program will continue providing the same amount up to an additional three years for the continuous production of local crops to ensure they are market ready.

With the recent closure of a Walmart on East Colfax Avenue and Havana Street — which Grevious said impacted Aurora residents’ accessibility to fresh produce — his marketplace aims to step in.

Although Grevious and his family have a prominent presence in the marketplace, many vendors build upon the community-centric atmosphere the Rebel Marketplace provides.

Farming from home

Johnson has been participating in the Rebel Marketplace for a few years. Every weekend, he rides his bike to and from his rented kitchen space, near his home, to deliver his frozen treats.

During the week, Johnson uses his own hydroponic system in his home to grow a variety of produce like strawberries and mushrooms, the former being used for his sweet treats, as a part of his “full-circle food service business.” On Saturdays, he spends his day selling his desserts from an ice box attached to his bike.

Johnson, an African American, has taken classes that focus on “health and well-being that offers alternatives based on ancestry and science.” Through those, he’s learned the benefits of using different ingredients for better consumption amongst marginalized communities.

His business does not include dairy products because, as he describes, “ancestors of most minority communities were not cattle farmers and therefore do not have the genetics to properly digest and break down lactose.”

Growing heirloom crops from home

A produce vendor and farmer, Kezia Lozano, started Alegría Gardens three years ago as a means to heal family trauma. Lozano’s father was a migrant farm worker from Tamaulipas, Mexico where Lozano says he was exploited as “cheap labor for wealthy landowners.”

Despite persistence from her parents to avoid farming, she felt a calling as a child to grow produce.

“I finally put my hands in the dirt to grow my own food in 2020, realized the depth of the calling and decided that since I have the privilege of gentleness in land access, I am going to put my efforts into healing that generational trauma and feed my community at the same time,” Lozano said.

Growing heirloom crops and ensuring biodiversity in the food system is a passion of Lozano’s. Some of the various crops she grows are corn, beans, amaranth and squash. According to Lozano, virtually all of her crops are indigenous.

“(Rarámuri crops are) often overlooked and unavailable in conventional markets but were banned from cultivation by the Spanish in Mexico for hundreds of years due to its nutritional and spiritual value,” Lozano said. “It was kept alive in secret by indigenous farmers and I want to honor that ancestral tradition by making it available to the Mexican-American community here.”

Starting out young

Fifteen-year-old Justine Pipping, vendor and founder of Marshmallow Express, stands in the shade at her booth with homemade marshmallows with flavors like watermelon, matcha and birthday cake.

Pipping began her business in high school, where she makes homemade marshmallows for her classmates and friends. She learned about a program that her school provides that includes a trip to Barcelona, inspiring her to create her own small business to help her fund the trip for herself. Now, she sells marshmallows for the Aurora community.

With the help of Rebel Marketplace and other events around the Aurora area, she hopes to expand her business into something more with the help and support of her own family.

“My mom has been really encouraging. And she says that we should push to get a cafe at some point,” Pipping said. “We’re mostly thinking about how it’ll look and we also want a safe space for kids my age to go to relax.”

At a crossroads

The Rebel Marketplace is at a “crossroads” at this point, according to Grevious, in regard to foot traffic and sales. They are gathering data and information to measure presence within their marketplace.

The Rebel Marketplace is beginning its fifth year, and this year is the first time the marketplace will run every Saturday this summer. The project has experienced some issues with the city permitting, as well as a change in foot traffic lately. Grievous looks to sustain the marketplace’s vendors and is wanting the marketplace to stay present in the Aurora community.

“So it’s an economic question, it’s a philosophical question and it’s a needs question,” Grievous said. “So figuring out ways that Rebel Marketplace can fill that gap for whatever it is to help those folks who need fresh food and things like that.”

If you go:

Information is at www.rebelmarketplace.com

Generally, the garden marketplace is in Del Mar Park at 312 Del Mar Circle every Saturday from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. On July 6, the project will offer vendors at Town Center of Aurora Mall.

Christian Arndt attends Colorado State and serves as editor of the Life & Culture desk at the Rocky Mountain Collegian. He found a love for journalism through a passion for writing in high school and through reviewing concerts and films. Since joining the Collegian in early 2023, he has worked to build an audience who trusts him to provide unique twists on local beat coverage. He spends his free time exploring the outdoors, small towns and walking his dog.