Farmers Markets Booming in City

Saturday my husband and I stopped in at the Greater Springfield Farmers’ Market on our way to Table Rock Lake to talk to some of the market vendors. It was a cold day, with a little sleet early in the morning. But, even with the cold and unfriendly weather the consumers kept rolling in to buy things like bison meat, bedding plants, cut flowers, homemade baked goods and honey products.

The Springfield News Journal had a recent article about the popularity in farmers’ markets in southwest Missouri this past week.

As spring arrives, area farmers markets are gearing up for the 2008 season.

The Greater Springfield Farmers Market opens at 8:30 a.m. today in a Battlefield Mall parking lot.

The Commercial Street market opens April 26. A new one, Southwest Farmers' Market at Great Southern, opens May 7.

(PHOTO: Keilani Coticchio, 14, picks daffodils at the family farm in Ozark on Wednesday afternoon.)

"We feel there are more opportunities for more local food growers, and perhaps with more local food growers, foods don't have to travel far," said Ray Hackett, a Buffalo area farmer who is setting up the new market. It will be in the parking lot of Great Southern Operation Center at 218 S. Glenstone Ave.

The more, the merrier, said Mary Collette and Henry Beersman, who are organizing two other farmers markets in town.

"I can help him fill his thing really good," said Beersman, who said he turned down 20 vendors last week because the Greater Springfield Farmers Market had run out of space.

The market usually has 90 or so members but signed up 108 this year, Beersman said.

Read the entire Springfield News Journal story here.