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Welcome to the Market's Story and Information Center where we offer PDF formatted documents to download and open using Acrobat Reader, as well as Word documents. Applications are accepted between January and the end of February each year. We don't keep applications on file or have a waiting list. Please see the Application for more information and criteria. Information Download Center |
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by Kelly Clark, Special Events Coordinator Carrboro is home to the nationally recognized Carrboro Farmers’ Market. Celebrating its 30th season in 2008, the Market serves the Carrboro community and Triangle area with 2 weekly markets. Open Saturday mornings year round, from 7 am (or 8 am depending on the season) to noon, and Wednesday afternoons, 3:30 to 6:30 pm, from late April through mid-October, the Market offers shoppers the opportunity to buy the best locally grown and hand-crafted products. We have also opened a Thursday Farmers' Market at Southern Village in Chapel Hill from 3:30 to 7 pm.  Located at the Carrboro Town Commons, adjacent to Town Hall at 301 West Main Street, and at Southern Village on the movies lawn, the Market features a regional variety of seasonal vegetables and fruits, flower arrangements and flowers to arrange, cow and goats milk cheeses, meats, prepared foods such as jams and pickles, baked goods, bedding and landscape plants, herbs, honey, value-added farm products such as soap and mohair weavings, and a limited number of artistic craft items such as metal works, pottery, pressed flowers, baskets, and quilts. Three very important features make the Chapel Hill/Carrboro Farmers’ Market truly a farmers’ market. The vendors themselves produce all goods sold at the Market. Everything comes from within a 50-mile radius of Carrboro, and you will also be talking to and buying from the growers themselves, as vendors must represent their own products.  The Market is also unique in that it is a vendor-run market. Overseen by a board of directors who are elected by the general membership, these volunteers’ help to assure that the Market remains true to its original mission of providing an outlet for farmers to market their locally produced goods, while deciding how the Market should evolve to suit the needs of the vendors as well as the community it serves. Two staff members a market manager and a special events coordinator support the board. The Wednesday Market is managed by one of the vendors. The Market has reached out to the community in new ways over the past several years. Special events have been expanded to include cooking demonstrations which show how to take advantage of seasonal produce, experts are brought in to answer questions regarding preserving foods safely at home, and additional tasting opportunities have been added to include prepared foods and baked goods. Increased interaction with the business community has been sought in order to identify outlying parking areas that Market customers can use. A volunteer network is under development in order to provide support for a market information booth, special events and, eventually, a customer pick-up zone. The Market has a very exciting future, which is made stronger by its long and rich history. A number of vendors have sold at the Market since its inception.  The Carrboro and Southern Village Farmers’ Markets are operated by The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Farmers’ Market, Incorporated. Prior to 1977, there had been a series of markets in the Chapel Hill area, which were run informally by a group of area farmers. The move to Carrboro began in 1977 with two simultaneous events. First, a project was under development by a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health, called the North Carolina Agricultural Marketing Project. The project’s goal was to provide an outlet for local farmers to sell their produce on a regular basis while providing townspeople greater access to high quality fresh produce.  Second, the town of Carrboro was investigating ways to assure that the downtown area remained an active and vibrant part of the community. In an effort to meet this goal, the town successfully sought funding from the NC General Assembly to build a shelter for a farmers’ market. The university project helped the farmers formalize an organizational structure, and the town selected The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Farmers’ Market to run a market under the new shelter on Roberson Street on land leased from Carr Mill Mall. The Market grew steadily from 1978 to 1989. Starting with barely 20 vendors in 1978, the number had increased to 50 by the mid ‘80’s, and 90 vendors were selling, over the course of a market year by 1989. This also marked the year that the lease on the Carr Mill Mall space expired. The Market needed a new home, and the town did not want the Market to leave Carrboro. An agricultural grant was sought to build new shelters and complete necessary site improvements at the Carrboro Town Commons, a recreational area under development adjacent to Town Hall. In 1993 the grant was approved, and in 1996 the Carrboro Farmers’ Market opened in its new location. You will need Acrobat Reader to read the pdf files. |
