Great Barrington — The 35th season of the town’s Farmers’ Market, which started on May 10 and ran continuously every Saturday from morning to early afternoon at 18 Church Street, wrapped up on Saturday, November 8.
Market Manager Dennis Iodice called this year’s season “amazing,” with 1,600 to 2,000 people attending each market. “But we did have a lot of issues with the federal government at the beginning of the season,” Idoice said. “Because of the [federal] shutdowns, we weren’t able to get the number that we needed to process SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] customers. For the first six weeks of the market, we didn’t have any support from the federal government. But through the gracious donations of Berkshire Agricultural Ventures and their SNAP Market Match Program, we were able to still give SNAP participants the $30 they would have gotten as their [SNAP] match.”
Despite these challenges, Idoice said attendance remained high all throughout the season. “You have people who come here every week,” he said. “You see people here who sit down, grab a coffee and a pastry before they go shopping, and they use this space to meet people.”
According to Iodice, this year’s market had 30 vendors—some full time and some occasional—including local farms such as Indian Line Farm, Chaseholm Farm, Off the Shelf Farm, and Cricket Creek Farm, as well as bakeries like Berkshire Mountain Bakery, Our Daily Bread Bakery, and Pastries by Hannah.
A Winter Farmers’ Market, organized by Berkshire Grown, is scheduled to start on Saturday, November 22, at The Housy Dome in Housatonic, and will take place once a month until April.
For more information about the Winter Farmers’ Market, visit Berkshire Grown’s website.
