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Outdoors
Smoky Mountain News
A vendor displays a bounty of plants for sale during a pre-COVID farmers market. Donated photo
Two decades and counting Jackson County Farmers Market celebrates 20 years BY HOLLY KAYS STAFF WRITER ack in the 1990s, Karen and Johnny White were in a nomadic phase of life, spending several months traveling the country in search of a place to call home. Time after time, they found themselves most drawn to small towns with vibrant farmers markets. “While we fell in love with Western North Carolina, they didn’t have a farmers market, so we wanted to add that to the place that we lived,” said White, who now lives in Oklahoma. The Whites moved to a small farm in Cullowhee in 1998, where Karen began work-
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ing as a nutritionist at Western Carolina University. A couple years into the move, her desire for a local farmers market was still there, so Karen wrote a memo addressed to a list of 12 different people, including Christy Bredenkamp, who at the time was the horticulture extension agent for Jackson County. In the memo, dated June 23, 2000, Karen wrote that the previous week she’d been driving through Waynesville and noticed “a half dozen trucks parked in a parking lot with fresh produce and honey in the backs and people hanging about in front.” Jackson County could have something like that, she said, and she hoped that recipients of the letter might be willing to help pull it off.
THE EARLY DAYS The idea took hold. By September, the Jackson County Farmers Market had launched in the Sylva parking lot that abuts what is now Bridge Park — the same place it’s still held now, 20 years later. “Of course when you first start, you never know how things are going to unfold, and certainly farmers markets have been attempted before and have failed,” said Bredenkamp, who is now director of the Macon County Extension Center. “I’m happy to say this one did not, and has succeeded and carried on for 20 years.” Ron and Cathy Arps were longtime vendors with the market, joining in the market’s first years and participating continuously for 15 more before retiring at the end of the 2017 growing season. In the early days, said Cathy, the market was a far cry from the organized, bustling affair that exists today. Twenty years ago, selling extra produce for money was something of a foreign concept in this area — if you had extra, you’d just give it to your neighbor. Shopping at a farmers market wasn’t a thing people did. “In the beginning it was definitely kind of your social break,” she said. “You did all that work so you could sit there for three hours and talk to each other and trade stuff and go home. But then it really did grow. It became a thing that people did both for local produce and for the social scene of the farmers market.” “It was fun,” Bredenkamp said of those early days. “There were no fees, no management, no rules or regulations really. The only rule we had was we had to grow something to sell it.” Bredenkamp helped launch the organization, heading it up for four years before turning it over to White and the vendors in 2004. Susanna Patty became the first official market
manager in 2007 and served through, when it was still a loose, informal organization. White remembers going to the bank with Patty to open the market’s first business account, and Arps remembers that Patty was initially paid for her efforts with vegetables rather than with cash. Jenny McPherson was the market’s next leader, did much to grow the market over the years that she remained in the position. The average number of vendors grew from the handful of five or so that had appeared in the early years to between 20 and 30 depending on the season, and in 2011 the market began moving indoors for the winter rather than ceasing operations until spring. A board of directors was established and the organization became more formalized. It also worked to make the market a welcoming place for lower-income people, in 2012 becoming the first farmers market west of Asheville to accept SNAP benefits as payment for produce. It wasn’t just about shopping, either — the market would often include live music as well as activities for kids.
A CONTINUING STORY The version of the farmers market that the most recent market director, Lisa McBride, encountered when she took the job in 2017 was miles removed from the informal social gathering of small-time growers that White first mobilized in 2000, and she worked to advance the organization even further. The farmers market is no longer limited to summer, to Saturday or to Sylva. Rather than moving indoors for the winter, the Saturday market now remains outside at Bridge Park year-round — though with slightly shortened hours — and during the growing season a Wednesday evening market that was initially held at Bridge Park as well is now offered in
In a 2004 photo, Cathy Arps helps a customer at the vendor station she and her husband Ron ran for 15 years. Donated photo
