It’s September, and we are slammed at the Community Garden, the Gleaning Project, and the Farmers Market. It’s our busiest time of year, without a doubt.
We’ve been quite pleased with our new Farmers Market, here in our 15th week since May 31st this year. Our biggest challenge has been in attracting vendors to something new, since we started soliciting vendors a little late in the season after they’d already committed to other regional markets.
The appetite is definitely there from shoppers, however. There are literally thousands of people within a 2 km radius who are eager to support local farms and food producers, and we are dead certain that our existence doesn’t impact the other established and excellent markets in the region. In fact, having more choice can only improve the local food community by adding to the conversation and creating more options.
Our anchor tenants at Dashwood Farms, The Big Bread Box sourdough, and No Big Dill Jams and Jellies have really come through with their consistently high quality products, and we’ve enjoyed drop in visits from other vendors, like Robin’s Nest Gluten-Free Baked Goods, Tea Infused Granola, Eat Well Farms, Harpers Honey, Vancouver Island Berries, and a bunch more. We’re still accepting drop-in vendors for the rest of the season.
Meanwhile, our gleaning program, which is the original impetus behind our entire organization, has been incredibly busy picking backyard fruit and distributing it through our MAC Community Garden. We’ve had double the amount of gleaning requests over last year (2025) and as of today, Sept 2, we have collected 4600 pounds of fruit that might otherwise go to waste. In 2025 we picked a total of 7644 pounds, which was a crazy amount, and we stand to smash that record this year. We appreciate and thank our volunteers for giving their time to spend on this task, including Gloria, Norm, Bimala, Diane, Don, Rob, Lonnie, Joyce, Jon and others that I’ve forgotten.
