Vancouver Farmers Market sprouts anew

From mostly near and occasionally far, new farmers and growers keep flocking to the Vancouver Farmers Market, which opened for the season March 17.

“We’re seeing a lot of new interest,” said executive director Jordan Boldt. “We don’t usually see a ton of that every year. This is probably the most active we’ve been in a number of years.” There are 14 new produce and food vendors on the scene in 2018, he said.

Thanks to the hot economy? Rising foodie fascination? All that and more, Boldt said.

“We have at least two new farms from younger, more professional-background people who are coming from other industries and choosing to pivot into agriculture or the food industry,” he said. “I think we’re seeing people looking for secondary or supplementary careers where they can be creative and follow up their passions.

“Starting a restaurant is so hard and expensive and risky,” he said, but launching a booth at the Vancouver Farmers Market “is a lower barrier to entry.”

For example, there’s new mushroom maven Ash Tree Farms of Vancouver, which rents warehouse space in the city and grows its fungal delights indoors in bags of sawdust or on moldering old logs.

“If you’re not a wild mushroom forager, this is a common way to cultivate mushrooms commercially,” Boldt said. (“It’s a crazy world,” he added.)

Like Ash Tree, most vendor farms are quite local, but a few may travel an hour or three to get here for the weekend — such as Round Table Farm, another market newcomer, which grows salad veggies in Winlock to the north; and Alex Farm in the Yakima Valley, which grows “things in bulk that are not super-prevalent on this side of the mountains, like cherries and asparagus,” Boldt said.

While the commitment of the Vancouver Farmers Market is to stay as “Clark County-centric” as possible, Boldt said, “our market is so busy and well trafficked on weekends, we need to make sure we have adequate products and representation for our customers. Local farming isn’t quite enough to provide a robust product line over the course of a long season.”

So, he said, “We start at Clark County and radiate out from there, as needs be.”

Success story

The Vancouver Farmers Market has been one of this city’s real people-pleasing success stories since it launched in 1990. What began as a small gathering of local growers in a less-than-glamorous location at the bottom of Main Street has blossomed into a signature weekend event that gains extra zest from the overlapping Esther Short Park scene — playground, luxurious greenspace and performance stage. There’s often something happening in the park while the market is underway.

But that’s not the main attraction for most visitors. They come to peruse the offerings of more than 250 vendors in all — fresh produce, flowers, plants, baked goods, prepared foods, pet treats and accessories for self, home and garden. You can buy a hot lunch and enjoy it while listening to live local music, too; this year’s entertainment schedule (two acts on Saturdays, one on Sundays) already boasts everything from Latin jazz to acoustic fingerstyle guitar to folk duos to straight-ahead rock and roll.

Customers even come to our market from south of the border, saying that Vancouver has the best farmers market in the area. The market claims to be the No. 1 visitor attraction in Southwest Washington.