From my apartment in Mt. Pleasant, I could walk to the Saturday farmers’ market in Lamont Park. Or head down to U and 14th Streets for that market. Or Columbia Heights. And Dupont on Sunday. That’s not to speak of the Harris Teeter, Safeway and Giant nearby. But in the District’s eastern-most wards, farmers’ markets — which have proliferated throughout the city in recent years, recently exceeding 30 — are far harder to find.

Last weekend, though, Ward 7 welcomed a new farmers’ market, the second for the ward and the third serving communities east of the Anacostia River. The new market, located off of Kenilworth Avenue NE and near the Minnesota Avenue Metro, sits in the midst of a food desert with few options, much less healthy choices sold directly by the producers themselves.

Saturday’s inaugural market featured a small number of vendors selling everything from local produce to homemade Turkish food. As the market develops — it’ll run through the weekend before Thanksgiving — the organizers hope to add more stands, all of which will be limited to producers only. Chefs from the University of the District of Columbia will be on hand to educate shoppers on what to do with the produce they buy — on Saturday, it was peach crisp and a carrot/apple yogurt dish — and a variety of payment options will be offered, including WIC and senior citizen discount vouchers. (Currently, some 16 farmers’ markets across the city accept vouchers of some sort, six of which offer double the value of vouchers.)

The market is a joint effort between City Interests, a real estate development firm that owns and plans to develop 15.5 acres of surrounding land, the University of the District of Columbia Extension Service and the D.C. Promise Neighborhood Initiative. It’s managed by Farmers’ Market Management Associates, which helped set up a farmers market in Ward 8 earlier this year. (Correction: I mistakenly attributed the management of the Ward 8 farmers’ market to the group managing the Ward 7 market; they don’t. Also, the Ward 8 market has been around for longer than I noted. Apologies all around.)

Allison Crowley of City Interests recently wrote that she hopes that “the weekly event will become an outlet for creative, active programming and will draw greater attention to the concerns of food access and nutrition in underserved neighborhoods throughout the District.”

For Donné Malloy, who worked since April to get the market off the ground and now helps manage it, the market will also serve a simpler purpose. “People like the idea that they can have what everyone else has,” she said.