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For employees near Aurora Lakeland Medical Center, healthy eating is right outside the door

Barbara Schneider, an employee of Aurora Lakeland Medical Center in Elkhorn, purchases fresh produce from Gordon Smith, a farmer at Cedar Bend Produce. Smith is one of four vendors at a new farmers market sponsored by the hospital to get staff, patients and visitors to make healthier food choices. Margaret Plevak/staff.

ELKHORN -- Barbara Schneider found picture-perfect heads of broccoli and tiny patty-pan squash, while Greta Zeller discovered lots of tomatoes and whole-grain bread with great taste -- and neither woman had to leave work to shop.

Instead, the two are frequent customers of a weekly farmers market established through Aurora Lakeland Medical Center, where they both work.

The market, set up in a visitor parking lot across the street from the hospital, located on County Highway NN, is designed to draw hospital employees, patients and visitors to the fresh produce offered there, said Shelby Maier, supervisor of health information for the Walworth Aurora Medical Group.

The idea of easy access to fresh local produce was raised by a committee of employees of Aurora clinics and Lakeland Medical Center who were trying to come up with ways for staff and patients to make healthier food choices, Maier said.

Read the full story in the Sept. 6 2009 e-edition of Walworth County Sunday, page 1B.