Hey, heyyyy! I hope everyone had a super relaxing weekend. Jeremy and I played in the local 3 on 3 basketball tournament on Saturday and had a blast. It's safe to say we were S-O-R-E afterwards, haha. Anyways, I am really excited to share this blog post with all of you, because it is something that me and a few others have been working on for the past couple of months. About 2 weeks ago, Quincy had its FIRST EVER farmers market! Now for those who don't know, Quincy is known for growing LOTS of produce. We're known for our sweet corn and potatoes, and are also getting known for our grapes, apples, and cherries! And those are just to name a few! Quincy is an agricultural/farming community, so not having a farmers market was just bizarre. My two great friends, Chelsea Putnam & Sonia Padron, are the ones I hooked up with to get this whole thing started. The night I met Chelsea, her mom told me that it was Chelsea's goal this year to start a farmers market. Sonia and I have known each other for a while now and have talked about how awesome it would be to have a market. So when I met Chelsea, I knew that it was FATE; we were all meant to meet each other and start a farmers market! I went to school for health program planning, so I was really looking forward to putting my education to use. Thank you, Eastern, for preparing me to start a farmers market, haha! After a couple meetings, we brought on board Chelsea's mom, Julie, Sonia's friend, LeeAnnette, and then Oscar, who is the one who designed our logo!
There's our little backstory for ya! We spent about 3 months or so planning, putting together a project proposal, and getting our ducks in a row to have June 3rd as our grand opening! And let me tell you, the turnout did NOT disappoint at all. We had 15 vendors, 3 of them being non-profits. We also had live music! One of those performers was Leah Shelton, a Quincy native! The parking lots stayed full until about 1pm, which definitely surpassed any expectations we had. The feedback we received was nothing but kinds words, which we absolutely loved hearing. We are working on getting a wine/beer garden started at the market, which is something we are very excited about! We also have some fun lawn games lined up for kids! The market is something we are very proud of and something we have put a lot of time and effort in to. We are doing this to help out our community that we love, and just to provide a new event for people to have fun at!
Our next market is this Saturday form 9am-2pm out at Lauzier Park. We will have produce, prepared foods, crafts, baked goods, jams, snow cones, cotton candy, and more! We already have more vendors lined up and more live music coming your way. For those who are interested in becoming a vendor, click here! We can never have enough vendors! The Quincy Farmers Market also has their own booth, too, where we sell our shirts, bags, and at this market, PRODUCE! If you would like to learn more about the market just find us on Facebook at Quincy Farmers Market! (there is a Quincy, Massachusetts farmers market as well, so be sure to double check you have the correct one!) We hope to see more of you this weekend!
In the meantime, here are some snaps of our grand opening for you all!
xo,
Micaiah