New Beginnings For The Port Orchard Farmers Market

Kitsap CSAs and Growing For The Farmers Markets
Tuesday, March 10, 2009   7:00 pm
Norm Dicks Center, Main Auditorium
345 Sixth Street (Near 6th and Pacific)
Bremerton, WA 98337

Managers, board members and vendors for farmers markets are heroic people. The vast majority are volunteers. Producing a market every week from April through November in some cases is a lot of work, some of it fairly thankless. Doing a great job in an environment where you are working with everyone as equals and the demand is for consistency and quality could be called a work of art, social art.

martin Family Farms Stand_Port Orchard Real Estate

That’s why I am always impressed when I meet the people that do this work. They are truly dedicated and amazing people. Probably most of the buying public are not even aware of the time and sacrifice involved. So, when the opportunity arises we always want to give recognition where it is due.

Our champion writer, Sue Edwards, has already written about an eleven year market veteran, Pam Moyer, a.k.a. the Herbal Princess and her retirement from the demanding position as president. She has done a great job leading the market through good times and bad.

We can all be grateful that there are people willing to take up the plow and the Port Orchard Farmers Market has an industrious new board for the 2009 season:

President: Laura Pittman-Hewit
VP: Matthew Hamilton of Hamilton Family Farm
Secretary: Barbara Fangen
Treasurer: Jean Farmer of Tom Farmer Oysters
Market Rep: Jack Sanzalone of Sanzalones Greenhouses
Faye Aune of The Secret Garden
Farmer Rep: Tom Farmer of Tom Farmer Oysters
Market Manager: Val Starrett
Asst. Mgr: Josh LaLanne

Congratulations and Thank You to all of the new people. I have heard that you have ambitious plans for the market that will likely help it to continue to be one of the largest and most exciting markets on the Kitsap Penisnula.

The market is recruiting new vendors and wants to especially encourage home gardeners and small plot farmers to produce for the market. Sharon Howard, another ambitious volunteer will be presenting the opportunity at our KCAA March meeting. Gayle Larson and Ann Burkhardt will be on hand to introduce their classes for urban gardeners about how to grow food beautifully and profitably. Here are the details:

Kitsap CSAs and Growing For The Farmers Markets
Tuesday, March 10, 2009   7:00 pm
Norm Dicks Center, Main Auditorium
345 Sixth Street (Near 6th and Pacific)
Bremerton, WA 98337

About Jim Freeman

Jim is a real estate broker and licensed loan originator in Kitsap County, WA. He is also an angel investor in a software company, a children's toy product development and sales company, a biogas energy company, a CSA member and a pastured poultry operation on an Olympic Peninsula certified organic farm. As a business owner and investor Jim knows the central importance importance of local agriculture and looks to buy local food and invest in local food producers and processors whenever possible.
This entry was posted in Farmers Markets, Home Gardening, Local Food Education, Port Orchard Farmers Market and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>