Janet Brassart

August 30, 1946 - June 11, 2024 

I saw the news a couple of nights ago that my dear friend,Janet Brassart, had passed away. We haven’t kept in touch as well as I wouldhave liked in recent years, but I feel her loss. She was a friend andmentor when I was new to Emporia. She was a citizen role model. Here’s apiece I wrote after spending an afternoon with Janet in 2015.

 

Janet Brassart and her sister, Ruth Wise
Vendors at the Emporia Farmers Market

Emporia Farmers Market – Vendor Profile

April 7, 2015

Janet and I sit behind her house looking over her backyardgarden, drinking Keystone Light and enjoying the sun. Always water-wise, she’sdisgusted that we’ve not gotten more rain. “Our first two years, it rained alot,” she tells me. “Market was great. And then we had a couple of dry yearsand it was not so great. I was asking Ruth the other day, ‘If we’d had a yearlike this that first year, would we still be doing this?’”

It is only a few weeks later, of course, that the cloudsroll in and the sky starts weeping. By June, we are asking if the rain is evergoing to stop.

Janet’s garden literally fills her back yard. There are fourbeds, partially covered by some sort of light cotton sheeting to deter thesquirrels—Janet is no fan of squirrels. She points at two deep holes in thecenter of a planter she has covered with chicken wire. “They got in!” she says,adding a few expletives.

She pulls back the cover of a large pot at the edge of herpatio to reveal a cluster of beautiful, young bok choy (pak choi). “I may haveto come to the last winter market,” she says. “These will be ready. They won’twait for May.”

Janet uses her yard for vegetables, but she’s a fan offlowers, too. The southern portion of her garden has tulips, daffodils, and anassortment of greenery. She points out the asparagus nestled among the flowers.It is ready to eat. Summer market season is just around the corner.

The back of the yard is host to raspberries, blueberries,and currants. She’s got blackberries, too, though she’s not happy with the waythey are growing.

Vending at the Emporia Farmers Market was something Janetdecided to try out when she retired from teaching school, “just to see if Icould pay for my gardening habit,” she says.

“That first year I sold herbs and vinegar kits. People hadto supply their own vinegar. I had fresh herbs, the glass bottles, and I puttogether these little salad mixes, nothing fancy. Nothing like the salads wesell now. The first day I went to market, I took this pot of violets I pickedfrom the yard–they were weeds, really–to decorate the table. I sold it all. Thesalads. The herbs. My extra jars that I had brought as samples. Everything wasgone, and this lady came up and admired that pot of violets. She said, ‘Oh,that’s beautiful. Is that for sale?’ and I said, ‘Well, I guess it is.’”

I went home that night and called Ruth. I said, ‘You won’tbelieve it.’ And then Ruth started coming to market with me.”

The sisters began selling at the Emporia Farmers Market in2009. Janet became a member of the market’s board of directors in 2010. Ruth wasa frequent volunteer for special events and a farmhand to be counted on for themarket’s two biggest annual fundraisers; the Dirty Kanza Pre-Race PaloozaDinner in the spring and the Soup-A-Palooza held each fall.

Ruth has a garden that is probably equal to Janet's in size, or larger. But because Janet’s fills the entire backyard of her house intown and Ruth’s is dwarfed by the big metal shed that sits next to it at her home inthe country, one is left with the impression that Ruth has a little garden.Ruth and her husband raise beef cattle and farm. Her home is surrounded byflowerbeds and these flowers have become a staple of their market table in thesummer months. She might bring a dozen cut floral arrangements to each marketand it is a rare day when she does not sell each and every one of them.

In Janet’s backyard, we talk about the changes the markethas seen, the trends in food habits. “When I was growing up,” she says, “my dadmade a living on 300 acres. He may have rented a few more. If it was a bad yearfor corn, he dug a pit and cut it for silage to feed the cows. We had chickens,pigs, a garden, a milk cow. Everything was connected. You cut the tops off yourcarrots and fed them to the chickens. Extra milk from the cow, we fed it to thepigs. We cleaned out the chicken house each year and that all went to fertilizethe garden. That was the circle of life, not this Disney, Lion King crap.”

Before becoming vendors, neither Ruth nor Janet spent muchtime at the market.

“I’ve always lived here—in or near Emporia,” says Janet.“but I had never shopped the market before. I always grew my own food. I didn’tneed to go to the market.”

When I started managing the market, Janet and Ruth werestaple Saturday vendors throughout the summer season and attended the firstyears of Indoor Winter Markets through December. They’d then take a break tillspring, whenever spring in Kansas decided to arrive.

Janet Brassart is a retired high school teacher withthree grown children and four grandchildren. She has lived in Lyon County since1974 and in Emporia since 1983. She became an Emporia Farmers Market vendor in2009 and a board member in 2010. Janet is a backyard gardener who growsvegetables, small fruits and flowers. "There is hardly any grass left inmy back yard," she says. She believes in following an organic growingstrategy; work WITH nature, not against it.

Janet is a member of Lyon County Master Gardeners. As well as gardening, sheenjoys bird watching, reading, and fabric crafts.

TRMS, Emporia Farmers Market Manger, 2010-2016

, Legacy.com

Janet and Evie Simmons serve soup
at a Winter Market