Mid Valley Farmers Market - Up And Running!

I'm sorry I've been neglecting you all over the past month and a bit. Organizing the new farmers market has taken much longer than I thought it would. We held our first market on Saturday and it was amazing! We learned a lot about planning and organization and have a plan in place to improve each week. Do you want to know what the biggest problems we had were?

First,  crowd control. Actually it was more of a parking issue. We had so many people at times that the road got blocked and people were parking all over the place. Our solution for this is to move the vendors back further onto the grass to provide for a wider parking area. If the crowds continue to grow we'll have to mark out parking areas. There's lots of grassy space, we just need to encourage people to use it. Too many customers, what a problem to have! We appreciate all the community support, you guys are great. Please check back each week to see what's new and bear with us as we work out the kinks.

Second, lack of coffee. Vendors like us who get up early need coffee! Getting up at 3am to dig potatoes so they're fresh for you and to bake makes for one heck of a long day! And now everything is in place to just turn on the brewer as soon as we get there and have a pot ready within 20 mins. Our Bunn brewer has a large water tank so it takes a while to heat up. Plus I forgot my grounds until the second trip (silly me) so I kept everyone waiting.  On the subject of coffee, North Mountain Coffee in Berwick have agreed to donate us coffee each week which is terrific! Plus I hear that North Mountain coffee is delicious according to everyone who had some. I don't drink it personally but it's easy at the market to find other vendors who will sample it for me :)  We paired it up with wild blueberry muffins and cinnamon buns and it was great. As the cooler weather gets here I'm sure Meghan will do even more business. And thanks North Mountain for the coffee and the donation to the basket, the winner was thrilled!

A few of our vendors didn't come as scheduled for whatever reason but we're still accepting applications and hope to grow the market over time. If you're interested in finding out more just send me a message to managermidvalleymarket.com  We had a good turn out and sales were much higher than expected for all vendors except the coffee. We have a great little group of regular customers forming and we're available rain or shine because we've got the community centre booked until mid October and we can move inside if the weather gets crummy.

Look for the produce to change as the seasons change. Apples are beginning for us in September with our main crops of Cortlands available in October. Lettuces and peas will start to reappear as the weather cools and tomatoes and peppers should be available this week for at least one of our sellers. Yum!