Featured Vendor - Sunset Farm!

Authored by Connie Gillen; Reminiscing from Sunset Farm, one of the original, founding members of the Amherst Farmers' Market! 

As I look back over my 50 years participation in the Amherst Farmers' Market I see how many things have changed and how much has remained the same.  We are still in the center of the town, having gone from the parking lot to our wonderful new "home" on the grass of the Amherst Town Common!

We are still a group of small farmers and creative producers of value added products but we have lost a number of local Amherst farmers who have either become wholesalers or retired from farming, and added more value added products.
We have gone from locals begging to be let into the Market to having to solicit venders to join. It is a big commitment to keeping your Saturdays open from April until November. Yet, adding picnic tables and consumable food and music and a park-like atmosphere has made the Market experience more popular than ever!

We have gone from having the town’s business community "suspicious of our presence" to being welcomed with open-arms by the Town officials and having the Amherst Chamber of Commerce and the Amherst Business Improvement District promoting us as one of Amherst’s main features!

When Bill and I first joined the market in the early 70’s we had inherited 10 acres of farmland in downtown Amherst. We kept our day jobs but began growing basil, tomatoes, onion, garlic, cucumbers.  I sold our extra produce on the Town Common and gave out a pesto recipe, because no one had ever heard of it. I soon added my fresh fruit strawberry popsicles, because I was way ahead of Kennedy and didn’t want my kids consuming popsicles with sugar syrup and dyes. We grew our own strawberries and eventually supplemented with Lakeside strawberries.

Over the years I increased my variety of popsicles and we experimented with all kinds of produce - from greens, varieties of lettuces, cardoon, elephant garlic, many different types of tomatoes, squashes, arugula, kohlrabi, okra. If there was a vegetable in a catalogue, you can be sure we tried growing it at least once!

This is what made the Amherst Farmers' Market - the creativity, experimentation, and the variety of vendors and their products. And we think that this spirit is what makes Sunset Farm special as well! We draw on neighbors and friends, some of whom have been with us from the start, who volunteer, become our friends, invent
products, do specular flower arrangements, introduce foods from other cultures and become part of our ‘urban’ farm community.

Big changes occurred when we, at the Market, were compelled to create more rules for our evolving and growing "little" farmers' market!  Our first and long time president, John Spineti, registered us as a "Class A farmers' market" and that meant only selling what we grow/committed to being agricultural producers.  There were many hair splitting conversations about this over the years.  We did not want the market to turn into a flea market, to keep it's agricultural roots (pun intended!) AND, at the same time, we all wanted the market to be dynamic and creative and attract new customers and vendors and stay relevant!  Things got worked out over time with rules being revised and tweaked. Vendors of the majority, still need to be producers/growers having to grow at least 50% of what you sell.

Another big change came when it was decided to have the bulk of the vendors commit to a 20+ week market. This meant that you had to grow for three seasons of produce. Those who had specialty seasonal items might be excluded, so we evolved a guest vendor system to accommodate them.

A constant issue that affects all farmers' markets is the "problem" of having too many vendors that all grow the same product. How to balance issues of competition and yet maintain the variety necessary to attracting customers! Our Amherst Farmers Market had all the issues you see playing out in world trade, tariffs excluded!

Although we are all really in competition with each other for customers, there is generally a good feeling among vendors. We trade tips over what we grow, weather problems, individual crises, minding each other’s tents, and now helping each other negotiate SNAP transactions.

We all realize that the sustainability of the Market depends on all of us being successful. Knock out all the competition and you stand alone.   Again, a microcosm of the world!

Hope to see you out there each Saturday and supporting local producers and keeping the local economy rolling and healthy!
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