Every Wednesday, Ketrina Hutcherson and her volunteers stock a tented produce table along Lincoln Avenue in Lemington. It is turning heads in passing cars. Piles of leafy greens, tomatoes, and now, local peaches, present a picture of health, one Lemington doesn't get a chance to show very often.

"In Lawrenceville, Squirrel Hill and Bethel Park, a farm stand looks like it belongs there," said Ms. Hutcherson, the farm stand manager. "That's what we want for people here."

The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank's newest farm-stand site sits several blocks from the Lemington Avenue intersection in the city's northeast corner, where a large majority of residents are black. It's a long way from a grocer. But a farm stand is more than convenience, said Ms. Hutcherson, whose church, Inner City Ministries, sponsors the stand.

"I like the concept of it," she said. "Most people don't realize that in every nation, every color and every creed, we all went to the community market, or the local farmer. And haggled over prices. And talked about what was going on. With everything so mass-marketed today, we have gotten away from each other."

If that's true in general, the movement to eat local food indicates a shift back toward authentism.

Amid a proliferation of community farms and gardens throughout the city, four have just been adopted by Grow Pittsburgh, a three-year-old nonprofit. With a $7,500 Sprout Fund grant, Grow Pittsburgh hired Maria Graziani, founder of Healcrest Urban Community Farm in Garfield, to advise interns and volunteers from the Student Conservation Association.

One of those farms, founded by Ebony Earth, occupies part of a vacant lot a few blocks from the Lincoln Avenue farm stand.

"I told them that when they have produce, I want to buy from them," Ms. Hutcherson said.

The eat-local movement has been slow to resonate in black neighborhoods, but Ms. Earth and Ms. Hutcherson are two new messengers.

"One young guy was standing here the other day and he said, 'I don't have anything to do this summer, and I don't want to get in trouble,' so I handed him a shovel," Ms. Earth said.

Karen McDonald said the dynamic has been changing in the four years she has managed the farm stand at the Hill House Association.

"Some young moms will ask, 'What do you do with this?' she said, indicating a bunch of kale. "But we have demos that show them, and we swap recipes, and older people talk to younger people" about how they prepare food. "We are seeing more WIC moms, and they're buying up fruit." (WIC is a special nutritional program for women, infants and children.)

"I love the tomatoes and the big, fat Spanish onions," said Thelma A. Davis, a senior resident of Addison Terrace who shops at the Hill House and Addison Terrace farm stands. The Hill has no supermarket.

"This is a surprising convenience," she said. "The produce is beautiful, and they give you a good break."

Fifteen years ago, the Food Bank started three farm stands. Now it stocks 12 in neighborhoods that either have no grocery stores or 30 percent of its residents earn below federally established subsidy guidelines.

Vicki Lish, the Food Bank's farm-stand overseer, said Brookline's addition this year is "the first neighborhood that doesn't fit the demographic," but its Foodland went out of business last year, and 800-900 elderly residents qualify for the state's Farmers Market Nutrition Program.

The farm stands accept those vouchers, as well as WIC and food stamps.

Thursday at Addison Terrace, a public-housing campus in the Hill, Matthew Bolton, a nutrition educator for the Food Bank, set up a table and propane camp stove. It was his first week as the farm-stand food-demo guy.

When he told them he was making yellow squash patties, several teenagers looked as if he had said "eyeballs."

"What's in them?" one girl asked.

"Yellow squash," he said, adding the other ingredients: cheddar cheese, egg, onions, flour, cornmeal and canola oil.

One sweetly demure girl chewed and smiled.

"Yeah?" he asked.

"Good," she said, nodding.

Each farm stand manager and the volunteers work for proceeds for a sponsoring nonprofit, such as a church or a YMCA.

"On some produce we go over a little," said Lisa Reihl, the manager in Hazelwood. "But the tomatoes we're charging at cost." Her employer and farm-stand sponsor is the Hazelwood YMCA.

"This is our fourth year and it is catching on," Ms. Reihl said. "In March and April, people ask us, 'When are you starting up again?'"

The stands operate from June through November, and the food comes solely from local farms, except early in the season and when there's enough demand for what has to be shipped.

On Lincoln Avenue, crowds in the farm stand's first year have not exceeded 33 a day, said Ms. Hutcherson, the 28-year-old daughter of Bishop L.W. Hutcherson, pastor of Inner City Ministries.

Similarly, the tomatoes and peppers in Ebony Earth's garden down the street are undersized for mid-July, and the soil needs nitrogen enrichment. But the 33-year-old is inspired. She has enlisted community service work from girls at the Academy for Juvenile Offenders in Hays. She is collaborating with Laura Winter, organizer of a children's garden in the Central Northside.

And next Saturday, her public garden party on the site -- between Lemington Avenue and Churchland Street -- from 6 to 8 p.m. will celebrate the Higher Grounds Community Garden. For 10 years, it had been a vacant lot.

"In African-American communities, a lot of things have been forgotten," said Ms. Hutcherson. "Some people have never eaten a piece of produce outside the grocery store, and a lot of people just don't eat vegetables, unless you'd count a potato."

Wednesdays' farm stands are in Lemington, Brookline, Millvale, McKeesport, Turtle Creek and East Hills. Thursdays' are in the Hill, Lawrenceville, Homewood, Clairton and Hazelwood. For more information on the times and exact locations, visit www.pittsburghfoodbank.org and click on "Programs," then "Urban Agriculture," or call Vicki Lish at 412-460-3663 ext. 216.