Amherst Farmers’ Market Returns To Pre-COVID Format
Amherst Farmers Market 2022. Photo: Meg Gage
Saturday April 24 was the opening day of the Amherst Farmers’ Market, kicking off the Market’s 50th year. It was a beautiful spring day with lots of sun and happy people, briefly making it hard to imagine anything in the world is amuck. It was a far cry from opening day last year when a snowstorm the night before the scheduled opening day forced cancellation.
And the market is back to it’s pre-Covid format and ambience — no more waiting at a check-in tent for crowd management and to get your temperature taken, no more gapping distances between the stalls, no more pointing to produce you wanted and waiting for the vendor to wrap it, put it on a table and stand back. And no more orange caution tape that so profoundly undermined the relaxed feeling of a warm community event.
There are just over 40 registered vendors featuring myriad local produce familiar to Farmers’ Market regulars, including bread and other baked goods, wine and beer, cheese, honey with a display of live bees busy in their honey comb, wild edibles, fruit popsicles, spring veggies, frozen pierogis, hand-made soap, fresh spring flowers and plants for the garden. A list of 2022 vendors can be found here.
A large group of women were “dancing for the planet” in a high energy display of aerobics and happiness. They snaked through the crowd and then took over a large section of the middle of the Common. Petitioners gathered signatures for the Common Ground Market which they say, after many years of planning, is about to launch. The Zero Waste Campaign had a table, generating support for curbside compost pick-up.
The Market has outgrown its original location in the parking lot between the North and South parts of the Common. It now occupies about half of the South Common, which means cars can continue to park in the lot in the middle of the Common.
The Farmers’ Market will be open every Saturday morning from now through November, from 7:30 to 1:30. So, between now and late fall there will be a welcoming place in downtown Amherst where you can get local food and products, produced and sold by the farmers and entrepreneurs themselves.
More photos from the opening of the 2022 Amherst Farmers’ Market