It takes a lot to get a chef up before dawn. With the lure of breakfast burritos upon arrival at the Crescent City Farmers Market, all eighteen CulinaryCorps cooks managed to drag themselves out of their post-po'boy slumber and load with zombie-like obedience into the waiting vans.

As we pulled into the parking lot, the faint thread of daybreak was just beginning to stitch together the surrounding skyline. Welcome to a day in the life of a farmer.

By 8am, the market looked like a movie-set version of itself, bursting with lilac-colored leeks, buckets of rosy shrimp and deep-emerald greens of every persuasion. Our market volunteer day, created with the help of Darlene Wolnik, Associate Director, was envisioned to provide CulinaryCorps members with this exact scene - the moment when the farm meets the consumer. As an organization that places emphasis on utilizing culinary heritage as a platform for volunteer outreach, CulinaryCorps wanted to make a point of starting at the source.

As the first rays of light turned into intense mid-morning sunshine, CulinaryCorps was in full volunteer mode: collecting data for the market's SEED survey; setting up the demonstration tent for a Strawberry Showdown with Chef Susan Spice of Bayona; and helping out at the volunteer tent by keeping visitors smartly shod in market tees and totes. As patrons began to leisurely stroll past the stands and strike up conversations with our volunteers in white, what began as "where are you from?" questions turned into stories about the storm, struggles to rebuild and favorite recipes relied upon despite the challenges.

Not surprisingly in a dynamic and forthcoming city like New Orleans, what was intended to be a simple exploration of sourcing turned into a powerful forging of deeper connections and better understanding of a community in transition and the food that unites them all. In the end, CulinaryCorps discovered that when looking for the soul of a community, it doesn't hurt to follow the promise of homemade breakfast burritos right to the heart of the local farmers market.