2019 Farmers Market moves

Getting ready to set up shop at the fairgrounds
Alexis Barker
NLJ Reporter
 
The Newcastle Farmers Market will be back for its second year, according to organizer Andy McKay. 
Recently, McKay held a meeting to discuss the 2019 markets with vendors that had been a mainstay at last year’s events. 
“We decided a few things. We are going to be keeping our date and time the same as last year,” McKay said.
That means that the market will be held on Thursdays from 5 to 7 p.m. 
“The big change this year is, we will be moving locations. Railroad Park was an awesome venue, but during the off-season, the fairgrounds offered a spot at the fairgrounds. As a body of vendors we decided to accept that offer,” he said. 
McKay said that the downtown park had limited space for both vendor growth and parking. 
“We felt that with the constrained parking around the park, we were potentially losing customers that would have come. There is more parking at the fairgrounds,” he said. “Also, some weeks last year if we would have had 1 or 2 more vendors we weren’t sure what we would do. We would have run out of space for more vendors.” 
According to McKay, the fairgrounds location will allow the market to grow, providing a continually different variety of products for patrons. Last season, McKay said, the local market had more than 50 vendors selling a variety of items and he hopes the market will continue to offer that variety. 
“We had a variety of things as far as farmers markets go, and I believe that was one of the main draws of the event, especially into the middle and end of the season” McKay said. “We also had a couple of really big draws (that) people like seeing, including certain baked items and vendors with a large variety of different produce. I think people really enjoyed the shear diversity of the event.” 
So far in 2019, he said, new vendors who didn’t make an appearance last year are already contacting the organizer about the event. 
“Something that helps bring in new vendors is that we won’t be charging a vendor fee like last year. We are not being charged for our space, so we are trying to pass that on to our vendors,” McKay said. “I think that is something that really allowed people who had never participated in farmers markets the opportunity to take a chance and try it out.” 
Interested patrons and vendors alike will be able to come together at the weekly markets starting July 11 at the Weston County Fairgrounds. The farmers market will continue every Thursday evening until Sept. 26. 
“We were actually hoping to do the first Thursday in July because certain things like lettuce and carrots are already producing at that time, but that Thursday is the Fourth of July,” McKay said. “There are already so many awesome things going on that day, and we didn’t want to detract from those events so we decided to go with July 11.” 
He said the extra week gives vendors more time to “get things going.” 
“The beautiful things about a farmers market, in my opinion, is you are not going to see the same thing every time because different veggies and fruits are ready to harvest at different times,” McKay said. “You may come one week and there is tons of sweet corn, and two weeks later there is tons of zucchini. There is a constant rotation of items, and customers are constantly surprised by new products.” 
Interested vendors must fill out a merchant agreement, which is available by calling McKay at 307-630-6169 or by visiting the NewcastleWyFarmersMarket Facebook page.