So You Want to be a Farmers’ Market Vendor?
Summer at South of the James Farmers' Market
The Winter Farmers’ is going to continue at it’s location on Forest Hill Avenue (next to Blockbusters) every Saturday from 10 – 12 through April. Support for the Winter Market has grown to about 25 vendors but there is room for a few more. The vendor application for the Winter Market or other 2011 markets is available online. If you are interested in vending Market Umbrella must receive your completed application and fee no later than January 15th. I assume that is for the Winter Market I didn’t see a deadline on the other application. My early front-runner for best new addition to our markets is Pizza Tonight for providing all the makings for a great pizza.
One change to the market this year will be a switch to producer only. This means all products for sale must be handmade, homegrown, or homemade in Virginia by the vendor. Vendors with established CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) will be on a case by case basis.
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Just out of curiosity, which existing vendors won’t be back due to the producer-only switch?
I willing to bet that even Market Umbrella doesn’t have the answer to that question yet, since the application was just released. There will 85 or so vendors and will interesting to see if this change has a significant impact.
I suppose this is related to the flap over the Farm to Family bus.
Jennifer, a lot of markets are going to producer-only, it sort of prevents the type of huge-farm-produce reselling that can undercut smaller family farms on prices.
The Market Umbrella is a private organization. So I’m not sure how it all would play out – but I think there could be some ink spilled on the interstate commerce clause and usage of a public venue.