After a brief shut down in spring, the Sackville Farmers’ Market reopened in the Bill Johnston Memorial park this summer with new COVID-19 regulations.
With the days getting shorter and the air chillier, the market will not be able to stay outside for much longer.
Market manager Michael Freeman says that the market staff and vendors are busy brainstorming ways to stay open and stay safe as it gets colder.
More details on the plan as it stands to come, but first, here is how the farmers’ market fared this summer.
MF: Our vendor numbers went down, absolutely. You can see by looking at the market. We used to be, in a good year, a market that would have, depending on the weather, on a Saturday in the summer 30 to 45 vendors, I think 46 was our record. This year, we broke 25 a couple of times.
The composition of the market has changed significantly. Where we used to be about a third farmers, a third prepared foods and hot food to-go vendors, and a third artisans and crafters and artists. The non-primary product categories, the artisans and cooks have not been showing up in part because those are not often the larger businesses that have employees and need to operate because they’re people’s bread and butter and 100% of their income. But the farmer sector has grown, we’ve had a number of new farmers come on. Some of them are older folks, some of them are new farmers. We, I think, are delivering about the same volume of essential food items: meats, seafood, eggs and fruits and vegetables, as we always have.
We did get into pre ordering and delivery of food boxes, and just kind of doing like a prix fixe where it’s going to be assorted vegetables and a loaf of bread. We have had so many people for so many reasons appreciate that program. Some of them because they’re self isolating, or have health concerns, some of them because they have mobility issues. Some of them because they love the market but they have social anxiety and they do not enjoy going down and bumping elbows, so to speak, or breathing the same air as 200 people or having to see 200 people. They can now access local food from these people that are local foodshed producers. We want to keep that going so that people can get their bread,eggs,veggies and fruits, and meat in whatever way they need.
It looks like we’re still in the 200 to 400 range, which is where we were when the market was on Bridge Street in the summer of 2014. So for me that is an incredible stat and I think it speaks to Sackville. So if you’re out there listening. The Sackville people show up for this stuff. They have strong relationships with our older producers and with our newer producers. That has been a major, major, major protective factor throughout all of this.
As for future plans, Freeman is crossing his fingers for a space across the street at 43 Main Street.
MF: We are going to be sort of pulling up stakes with the move of the Sackville Commons and moving across the street to have the hub of our market be in the back of 43 Main Street, once we get the lease signed that is. So we’ll be neighbors with all of these other great uptown Bagtown businesses, renting a kind of storage and unpacking and processing space where we can have vendors doing all of the market stuff that they need to do. We’re looking at adding some satellite locations as well, so I would encourage people to stay tuned. That sort of harkens back to what the market used to look like, seven [or] eight years ago when I came to town and started doing this. We’d have people behind the former Uncle Larry’s, and have people in the Bridge Street Cafe, and have people on the street, and sort of knitting together the town a little bit.
The people that love the market, I don’t know, like me, I like to come in if I’m shopping and spend two hours in the market. You can’t do that if you don’t have indoor space, but we can still come and get the same amount of stuff if we book ahead and have that be a process that you can go through in 20 minutes. It’s going to mean that we have to get vendors working together a little more on packing and taking orders, and we do have a system sort of worked out for how all that’s going to look. We get to find out what works and what doesn’t. So definitely a challenge. It’s something that farmers markets everywhere are having to get into, and we’re gonna see what that looks like.
Freeman is hopeful that fans of the farmers’ market will watch their social media for updates and feedback opportunities.
Plans are still subject to change, and Freeman says to expect a survey about market services and procedures soon.
MF: The cool thing is that all these people out there in Sackville and surrounding areas can actually help make it work. By getting informed about how this ordering system is going to look. I’m putting out a survey in the next couple of days to sort out people’s preferences for pickups versus deliveries, what kinds of products if we have a simplified order system are people gonna want to preorder on a weekly basis, stuff like that. People can stay involved and support us by figuring out what communication channel they’re going to get information from us about. We do a lot of stuff on social media, but if people know a bulletin board they can watch where we always put up posters…having people keep abreast and pay attention to when and how we move is going to be a major factor for us.
Stay tuned into market news on social media for updates.
By M. Cunningham
