Opening Day at the Brattleboro Farmers' Market

I was in Vermont visiting family over the weekend, and I was lucky to be able to swing by for part of opening day at the Brattleboro Farmers' Market.

Spring comes much later in Vermont than it does in Seattle, so there were more crafts and less produce than I'm used to seeing. There were some plant starts, and a forager selling fiddlehead ferns and ramps, or wild leeks.

The visit got me thinking about the role of crafts at farmers' markets. I'd recently seen an article offering tips for evaluating farmers' markets on their green credentials. One of the criteria offered was an emphasis on "growers only" or "food only" markets. According to them, a truly reputable market should include as few craftspeople as possible.

I have mixed feelings about this. Sure, farmers' markets are about food, but they're also about community and about buying local products. Food is a logical place to start when building local economies because fresh, seasonal products really taste better than stuff shipped from far away, but there are plenty of other products that can also be locally produced and marketed, and farmers' markets are logical places to sell them.

Craftspeople help to flesh out markets during times of year when agricultural products are in short supply. Many of the crafters I know who sell at farmers' markets feel that they don't get enough respect, and their needs are given very low priority by market managers.

I like to think of my experience as a market vendor as part of a very old tradition bringing people together to exchange goods and services. Ancient and medieval markets included not only food vendors, but also merchants, money changers, and even fortune tellers. We need to fix our broken food economy, but we need to fix so many parts of our economy that are broken, and the craftspeople deserve a place at the table as well.

The Brattleboro Farmers' Market is deeply scrupulous about their standards for food vendors. All produce has to be grown by the vendors, and prepared food items have to include as much local produce as possible. I wouldn't consider them any less green because they also honor their local craftspeople.