Saturday morning at Rocky Butte Farmers Market has the feel of a neighborhood block party. A band tunes up near the entrance. A pickling demo draws a small crowd. Shoppers linger at booths, catching up with vendors, trading recommendations, filling totes with berries and greens and cuts of meat. At more than a few stalls, people are paying with paper vouchers instead of cash — the pahtl o'-pe-kwan, or Full Basket, currency that's become as familiar a sight at this market as the produce itself.

It's the kind of scene that's easy to take for granted until you learn how close it came to not happening this year. 

"We noticed before the program came back this year — we were like, 'Oh, I haven't seen this person in a while,'" Liz Braun, Rocky Butte's market director, said of how shoppers have come to depend on the program. "And they're all back now."

That's the clearest evidence anyone has that Full Basket is working. People vote with their feet, and when the money disappears, so do the shoppers who needed it most to justify the trip.

The program is now in its second season at Cully and Rocky Butte Farmers Markets, and it looks different than it did last year — leaner, more deliberate, and shaped by last year's lessons about what it takes to keep a grassroots food-access program alive past its first burst of grant money.

Last year, pahtl o'-pe-kwan launched almost by accident. A separate NAYA department — NAYA administers the Cully Farmers Market — had leftover Community Supported Agriculture funds it couldn't return, and former Cully market manager S.A. Lawrence-Welch turned that windfall into a program that, at its peak, handed out $50 per person per market across three locations — Cully, Rocky Butte, and Woodlawn. 

"This program is essentially a food access program aimed at creating low-barrier access to residents of the NE neighborhoods," said Cully Farmers Market Coordinator Natalie Kogan-White, "trying to get them access to something they might not qualify for otherwise."

The concept worked almost too well. Demand was high enough that the per-person amount had to be cut from $50 to $25 by mid-July just to make the funding last through the end of the season — a hard lesson organizers took directly into how they built this year's version. 

That lesson shows up everywhere in this year's design. Rather than start high and cut later, organizers set a flat $20 per person, per market from day one — a number they know they can deliver on for the full season rather than promise and then walk back. The Native American Youth and Family Center's Health Equity Department stepped up to fund the program after several other grant applications fell through amid federal funding cuts, according to Kogan-White. 

It’s a smaller program this year, but It's also a more disciplined one: rather than spread thin across three markets, the funding is concentrated at two, Cully and Rocky Butte. Woodlawn isn't participating this season.

The physical format changed too: last year's carved wooden tokens are gone, replaced by paper currency cards similar to Double Up Food Bucks vouchers. The cards carry an expiration date and spell out exactly what they can and can't buy.

Eligibility remains intentionally wide open. Shoppers can qualify by showing proof of enrollment in any of 19 aid programs — SNAP, WIC, TANF, OHP, SSI, housing assistance and more — or by simply declaring a one-time hardship. Elders and seniors 65 and up qualify automatically. Every participant fills out a short, anonymous demographic survey when they pick up their card, data organizers hope will make the case for more sustainable, multi-year funding down the road.

Word that the program would return came together in a rush. Kogan-White's team confirmed funding only a few weeks before Cully's season opener on June 25; Rocky Butte followed two days later, on June 27, after learning the news around the first week of June. 

"It was kind of wild and exciting," Braun said. "I remember I found out Friday before a market ... and I couldn't help but tell the people I knew, like, we're hoping for it."

That excitement has translated into real demand. At Rocky Butte, some market days are already showing signs of unspent funds rolling over — enough that organizers are now considering boosting the per-person amount on specific high-need days rather than holding a flat rate all season.

For growers, the program is proving to be more than a nice bump in weekly revenue — it's changing who shows up and what they're able to buy.

Kyle Olsen, who farms with Twin Plums Farm in East Portland, is in his first full season with his own booth at Rocky Butte after selling at the market's community incubator table last year. Full Basket vouchers now account for roughly a quarter of his total sales.

"It's been amazing," Olsen said. "I've noticed new customers show up who haven't been here before, just because of the accessibility of it."

Olsen said most Full Basket shoppers are stacking it with other benefits — SNAP, Double Up Food Bucks — to stretch every dollar as far as it goes. That stacking is where Full Basket does something none of the other programs can: Double Up Food Bucks only matches SNAP spending on fruits and vegetables, but Full Basket tokens can be spent on proteins, meat and fish too. For a shopper trying to feed a family, that's the difference between a bag of produce and something that lasts in the freezer.

Braun put it plainly: these markets operate in neighborhoods where farmers can't lower prices to match what shoppers can afford without going under themselves, and the gap between what growing food actually costs and what a family can pay is the entire reason the program exists.

"It's honestly important to our survival as a market," she said, "because we're operating in a neighborhood that needs this support. It's proven by the fact that people weren't coming to the market unless they had a little extra help."

Both markets are candid that this year's funding is not guaranteed to repeat. NAYA has indicated it will likely serve as a backup funding source going forward, but Kogan-White said the goal is to diversify — landing a more consistent revenue stream instead of scrambling grant to grant. Rocky Butte Farmers Market — a 501(c)(3) in its own right — is setting up a way for the public to donate specifically to Full Basket through its Givebutter page. Organizers are also exploring transportation assistance this year, to help make sure the benefit is actually reachable for people who don't live within walking distance of either market.

The program's founder, S.A. Lawrence-Welch, is no longer with NAYA, but the framework she built is still driving both markets' decisions a year later — down to the demographic surveys she pushed for, which Kogan-White said are already proving useful for grant applications.

Ask Braun what she wants for the program's future, and she doesn't hesitate: she wants it to become a permanent fixture, not a pilot that has to re-prove itself every spring. And she thinks it could go further than that. 

"I see no reason why we can't be a model for other markets," she said. "There's been interest from other markets in how to replicate something like this."

For now, that future depends on demographic surveys, careful budgeting, and two small markets in Northeast Portland proving — one Saturday and one Thursday at a time — that when you hand people the money to shop where they want, they show up, and they keep coming back.

Cully Farmers Market runs Thursdays, 4-8 p.m., through September, at 42nd Avenue & NE Alberta Street. Rocky Butte Farmers Market runs Saturdays, 9 a.m.-1 p.m., through October, at NE Siskiyou Street & NE 80th Avenue. 

Full Basket cards are available at the information booth at both markets to anyone who can show proof of qualifying assistance or declare a one-time hardship — no appointment or paperwork required in advance.