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Eyota Farmers Market


By Iris Clark Neumann

Mon, May 7th, 2012
Posted in Eyota Home & Garden

The Eyota Farmers Market is about to start its second season on May 22, a Tuesday evening. Our first year in 2011 brought challenges of rainy, cold weather early in the season while several brand new vendors were learning the art of selling and customer service.

After deciding Wednesday would be our market day, we subsequently discovered Stewartville, Rochester, Winona and Plainview also held farmers markets on Wednesdays. Thus, we found although we’d planned to draw vendors from around the area, instead our market was comprised of very local vendors.

Actually, this turned into a good opportunity for several first-time, Eyota area growers and crafters, giving them a chance to become sellers without competing with bigger growers. The theme of our market is “homemade and homegrown” allowing crafted items to be sold along with vegetables and plants.

A committee formed by Eyota’s EDA director, Cathy Enerson, gathered several times to brainstorm ideas, plus the community was given opportunities via dot-surveys to choose a day and time. Initial hopes were to put the market downtown, but in the end, it was decided a shaded pathway in West Side Park, located near Highway 42 on the edge of Eyota was a better site. The big adjacent parking lot just off Fifth Street was another plus.

Ron Dickie, who farms just east of Eyota and has a sign along Highway 14 reading, “Ron’s Berry Farm,” sold bag after bagful of fresh asparagus at our earliest markets. He later followed with fresh flavorful strawberries, succulent sweet corn and wonderful juicy raspberries. Ron plans to return to our 2012 market.

Logan Clark worked as the market manager besides being a vegetable and plant vendor for the first time in 2011. Start-up funding through a Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) grant supplied money for marketing signs, a manager salary and equipment. Logan specialized in producing a mix of greens for salads, onions, radishes, broccoli and beets for his early crops. He also offered perennials, houseplants and potted herbs, and as the season progressed transitioned into tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, potatoes, beans, cabbage and squash.

Logan is my youngest son. We worked together to create the market as it moved past an initial planning stage. I assisted in washing and bagging produce for him, plus potting up plants since it gave me an excuse to be outdoors when the weather .....
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