A local chef, and president of a nonprofit, plans to open a weekly Point Loma farmers market at Point Loma High School from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Sunday starting on June 4.

Enter Brady Farmer, president of Devoted to Youth Foundation, a nonprofit first developed in Los Angeles and now expanded into San Diego, whose mission is to help underprivileged youth and families in need.

Concerning establishing farmers markets as an ideal method to help their cause, Farmer’s wife Mariana said: “Families were struggling after the pandemic to find jobs and provide for themselves, and we were seeing what we could do with our nonprofit to help. Brady came up with the idea.”

But Mariana said the farmers markets they’re starting are different by design. “We wanted to open a farmers market for the kids to use, and one that would help families through the same site,” she said. “The markets have nice kids’ areas where families can come to have some educational area with fun activities.”

Brady Farmer was exposed to poverty early on growing up in Seattle. He said he started cooking at age 5 “out of necessity.” He began helping out in the restaurant business as early as age 12. Around that time, he and his sister also became involved in helping raise kids with mental and physical handicaps.

Farmer said his big career break came when he moved from Washington state to Los Angeles in 2005 and had the good fortune to indulge his passion for cooking by “working for big-name celebrities including Beyonce, Robert Downey Jr., and Christina Aguilera. That’s also when I got more into nonprofits and learned about how I could actually help people.”

But Farmer acknowledged he was initially turned down by all the nonprofits he approached with his fundraising ideas. “So that pushed me into putting my money where my mouth was, starting a nonprofit and doing it myself,” he said.

Of the new farmers market Brady is starting for five hours on Sundays at PLHS, he said: “It’s going to be in the main parking lot and the center courtyard. Our nonprofit is going to raise money to feed families and put people back into the workforce. We want to work with people with mental and physical handicaps and disabilities, put them to work, and help them organize and fund small businesses. We want to help the underprivileged with our nonprofit.”

Regarding his future goals, Farmer said: “Our plan is to take farmers markets and put them all over the world. We want the farmers markets to be places where communities can come together, gather around food and entertainment, and have areas for kids. Our idea is to eventually create the largest family and kids youth area with an actual maternity area where mothers can relax with changing stations and nice educational kids areas.”

“We’d like to create a program where kids can learn about culture, fruits, and vegetables, the list goes on and on,” said Mariana Farmer adding, “Our plan for our farmers markets is different than every other farmers market. We want our markets to have a little bit of everything, but also with a little bit of purpose in the background.”