Farmers Market draws big crowd for opening day

Doug Ashcraft was cook­ing bacon and eggs while Christy Crittenden was mak­ing sand­wich­es and tak­ing orders with help from Emma Harvey.

“I haven’t been able to look up!” Christy said when asked how busy it had been Saturday morn­ing for open­ing day of the Winchester-Clark County Farmers Market. “It’s awesome!”

Ashcraft’s Shear Away Farm was among the 42 ven­dors for this year’s mar­ket, which opened May 10 on a bright spring morn­ing with tem­per­a­tures in the low 60s and vis­i­tors in the hundreds.

“It’s more than we’ve ever had,” Ken Howard, vice pres­i­dent of the board, said of the num­ber of farm­ers and oth­ers who have signed up to sell their pro­duce, meats and oth­er goods.

The crowd, also, he said, was larg­er than it’s been in the past.

“Folks have been look­ing for­ward to this,” he remarked.

Howard, a local artist, was sell­ing his Penguin Pottery and fresh eggs, but “the eggs didn’t last long,” he said.

You have to be there when it opens at 8 a.m. if you want to get some things, he reasoned.

“We’re farm­ers, and farm­ers get up ear­ly,” he said.

Mike Childress and Tom Collins of Tom & Mike’s Farm also ran out of some things ear­ly, includ­ing straw­ber­ry-rhubarb break­fast bars and var­i­ous kinds of bread.

“We had 36 loaves of bread and sold them all in the first hour,” Mike said. “It’s been a great open­ing day.”

At the Creative Coffees Roastery loca­tion, Lauren of Winchester, chil­dren Ryan Lane and Nova Ernest, and their friend Melissa St. Louis from the Dominican Republic were in a line of cus­tomers wait­ing to order hot or iced beverages.

St. Louis, a stu­dent, was impressed by the hospitality.

“Everyone loves to talk,” she said.

People come to the mar­ket on Depot Street to min­gle, have break­fast or brunch, lis­ten to musi­cians, walk their dogs, buy hon­ey, jel­ly, wine, pas­tries, duck eggs, lamb, let­tuce, bed­ding plants, and cut flow­ers, which were in abun­dance the day before Mother’s Day.

The mar­ket usu­al­ly opens Mother’s Day Weekend, and it will be open every Saturday at least through September, and maybe lat­er, accord­ing to Ashcraft, the board’s president.

The mar­ket opens at 8 a.m. and ends around noon.

Any pro­duce, eggs and oth­er food left over at the end of the day is donat­ed to Clark County Community Services to feed the needy.

Dates haven’t been set yet, but there will be spe­cial Saturdays for Veggie Fest and Kids’ Day, and the orga­ni­za­tion is look­ing for­ward to pos­si­bly hav­ing some Tuesday night markets.

Ale-8-One will intro­duce one of its spe­cial fla­vors on Aug. 4 at the mar­ket, Howard mentioned.

“I think it’s fab­u­lous!” said Whitney James of Winchester, who was look­ing at pot­tery at Howard’s booth while coun­try musi­cian Jordan Miller per­formed near­by on acoustic gui­tar and vocals. “It’s like a kick­off to summer.”

“This is the place to be on a Saturday morn­ing,” Howard said.

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