Douglass Farmers Market expands during second year

The Douglass Farmers Market will be open for business throughout the season this year.

Last year, its first, the market was open four times. This year it will be offered from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. every Tuesday from June 5 through Aug. 28 at the Douglass Community Center, 1000 West Paterson Street. Space for 15 vendors is available, the same number as last year. Organizers expect the greater continuity of 13 market days to help with turnout.

The Douglass Farmers Market was started to give people on Kalamazoo’s north side more access to fresh food. It also creates a way for people to come together and gives vendors a site to sell their produce or products. Vendors currently are being sought for this year’s market and applications are due by 5 p.m. May 1.

One of those vendors is Sheila Anderson. She’s also a Douglass Farmers Market Planning Committee Member. Her experience with the market last year was so positive she is encouraging more people to come out to see what it’s about.

Anderson creates pencil drawing illustrations with Afro-centric themes and bright colors. At last year's farmers market, her art work sold out on the first day she displayed it. "I left feeling really good about myself," Anderson says. It continued to sell each market day.

This year, she also will be offering baked goods in addition to her art work.

As a vendor at the farmers market she met not only those interested in buying her work but other artists. She also got to know farmers bringing in their produce for the market. "You have a chance to talk to the farmers," she says. And she enjoyed seeing children interacting with the farm vendors and their animals, too.

"Black children don't usually have an opportunity like this to get to pet goats and learn about farm animals," Anderson says. (Last year, one exciting moment was when a rooster got loose on the first market day.) Lake Village Homestead Farm, which showed animals last year, may return to the market this year.

"For as little as $10 you can be a vendor and sell the extra vegetables you have growing in your backyard," Anderson says. "Or you can participate by walking through and seeing what’s there. It’s really an opportunity to come together. We have this market as our own. This is wonderful for the Northside."

Writer: Kathy Jennings, Second Wave
Source: Sheila Anderson, Douglass Farmers Market