Published: October 10, 2009 09:30 pm      

Farmers markets wind down

SUTTONS BAY -- Michelle Baldwin likes to know where her food comes from.

Every Saturday morning Baldwin takes her young sons to a farmers market where she picks out her fresh produce, plus grapes or tomatoes for her boys to munch on the ride home. Sometimes Baldwin goes to the Traverse City market, but she particularly enjoys the smallness of her hometown farmers market in Suttons Bay.

"I like to buy fresh, locally grown food and this time of year I'll buy a lot of stuff to stock up for winter," she said.

Time is running out for farmers markets. Suttons Bay, part of the Leelanau Farmers Markets group that hosts weekly markets in Empire, Glen Arbor, Leland and Northport, will hold its last market on Oct. 17 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The other Leelanau markets closed in September. The Traverse City market will shut down Oct. 31.

As the season winds down there are fewer vendors and customers. Just a handful of people mill about among about 10 vendors shortly after opening Saturday, but the small crowd picks up as the sun rises higher, warming the morning air.

But even on its busiest days the Suttons Bay market, held on a small grassy lot on Broadway Street a block from downtown, will never be as chaotic or jammed-packed as Traverse City, said market Master Megan Gregory.

"You don't feel like you have to keep moving from booth to booth because if you stop you'll clog up the flow of people," said Gregory, who's finishing her first year organizing the Leelanau markets.

Customers would like to see more vendors, and vendors would prefer some more customers, but all seem to agree smallness is a big part of the market's charm.

Jim Kelderhouse of Copper River Farm sold flowers at the Traverse City market for eight years but likes the atmosphere of the smaller Leelanau markets better.

He did well in Traverse City until one year people started copying him, and the bottom fell out of his sales. He walked away from farming for four years before a 4-H project with his daughter brought him back in 2001.

The personal contact at the small markets in Leelanau has allowed him to build up a base clientele he can count on even when things are slow. He's also specialized, focusing on a few organic vegetables he grows well along with cut flower arrangements from perennials that take several years to grow.

"It's my passion and something I really enjoy doing, but it's not an easy way to make a living," Kelderhouse said. "There's a lot of people today trying small farms out, and it's a lot of competition for not a heavily populated area."

Jess Piskor is in his first year of farming, working family land in Northport where he grows heirloom vegetables on the Bare Knuckle Farm such as purple tomatoes and red and yellow carrots.

"It's been wonderful working in our own community, and we've made a lot of new friends," Piskor said. "Selling like this you get a lot of feedback from your customers about what they like and don't like, plus we're right here to tell people how to use it and what it tastes like. You don't get that at grocery store."

Jan Pezzi, of Suttons Bay, is also a regular at the farmers market, where she's gotten to know some of the vendors who carry her favorite stuff, including tart cherries, organic produce and fresh cinnamon bread.

Pezzi said she'll miss the market after it closes Oct. 17.

"I guess it'll be back to Green Giant frozen niblets," Pezzi said.