The Edible Schoolyard, Paris Edition: Champs-Elysees Transformed Into Farmers Market

Daily Mail

If you were lucky enough to be in Paris yesterday and today, we hope you meandered over to the Champs-Elysees to check out one of the most beautiful ad hoc farmers markets you're ever likely to see. To celebrate a 2-day French public holiday, the street before the Arc de Triomphe was transformed into an enormous market. The event is being described as a reminder to French president president Nicholas Sarkozy by that country's struggling farmers of the importance of what they do. French farmers have been protesting a lot lately: last month 1,000 cereal farmers drove their tractors to the capital to bring attention to their declining standard of living.

This time farmers carried in more than 8,000 plots of earth, 150,000 plants, 700 fully grown trees, pigs, cows, horses and sheep. Shoppers could buy plants and produce and sample food from vendors and from a massive barbeque organized by Parisian butchers. If that doesn't work, maybe next month farmers can wrap the Sorbonne in cheesecloth. Wonder if Christo's busy.