Mat-Su Farm Market celebrates 1 year

PALMER — As Old Man Winter blows into town, vendors at the Mat-Su Farm Market celebrate one year as the largest local year-round market.

This week, co-owner Penny Hart held down the market with more than 20 vendors while her husband, Carl Brooke was out sick. Whether potential patrons were out sick too or in at work, Hart said she was a little surprised they haven’t been getting more traffic.

“I think people still just don’t know about us,” she said.

The Monday market is only one year old, after all, and according to Brooke, most markets settle down this time of year, making way for one-day and weekend holiday bazaars.

“There have been a lot of attempts to have farm markets on a regular basis in Palmer and none of them have succeeded (through the winter),” Brooke said by phone.

But late fall is still a good time to buy produce, he said, and they usually have root vegetables available all the way through March. Many people also maintain a greenhouse through the winter, so Valley residents do not necessarily have to forgo fresh, local produce during the winter months.

If they do, it’s hard on the farmers.

“The problem that creates for the farmer is farmers have just got their vegetables out of the field,” he said. “Our market has provided them with a venue for them to sell all that product.”

Hart mentioned last year’s National Food Day market hosted by Envision Mat-Su as the inspiration for the Monday Mat-Su Market.

“It was very popular, it seemed there was quite a need for a regular farm market,” she said.

Brooke agreed.

“(Envision Mat-Su) invented the wheel, so to speak, in putting the thing together, and I was able to negotiate with the city for space to make this a permanent ongoing fixture,” he said.

It wasn’t about starting “just another market,” either.

“We started this market more as a service to the area farmers and to provide a forum where local people in Palmer would have access to a lot of the stuff they can’t usually get this time of year,” Brooke said.

Many of the vendors, he said, used to drive into Anchorage to sell their products, thinking that was the only place to command competitive prices. While vendors do tend to have more luck asking higher prices in the Anchorage markets, he said, Brooke said he thinks that kind of business doesn’t appropriately account for people’s budgets.

“There’s this idea that everyone has to go into Anchorage to make good money,” he said. “Some farmers in Alaska have to learn just because you’ve got really good potatoes doesn’t mean you can charge $10 more.”

Now that the market has proven it has “some staying power,” Brooke said, the city of Palmer has agreed to let them have priority to use the depot (they won’t be displaced by just any event that asks to use the space on a Monday, for example) starting the first week of February, after a long-awaited fire suppression system is to be installed.

“A lot of the farmers are talking a lot more serious look at us as being a fixture in the community, as opposed to being a flash in the pan,” Brooke said.

But again, it’s not just farmers. Kimberly Durst of Kimberly Durst Cakes, for example, started her business at the market in June, though she’s made cakes most of her life, for fun. A University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate, Durst said she is originally from Unalaska, and hopes to boost her career as a professional caterer.

Then there’s Violet Dolan, a Palmer resident who sews doll clothes and started selling them at the market just a few weeks ago.

Susan Vann, of Shushu’s Slippers, makes felted wool slippers and sells them both online and at the market. She said she just “wanted something to do from home” and was inspired to felt by a cute pair of slippers she saw in a shop window.

Jennifer Fritz, too, wasn’t looking to start her mini-business, “Reckon it’s a Craft,” but she “didn’t want to stick with one craft,” and soon she didn’t have room for all her homemade potholders, hairpins, aprons and other goods.

“I can only accumulate so much!” she said.

Even the Midnight Sun chapter of the Future Farmers of America set up a table in the depot to raise money for various projects, such as the School to Market program. Hart said students in local elementary schools already have radish “seeds in their hands” and are planting them in the classroom in preparation for future marketing.

The market is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., open Mondays and coupons are available for certain vendors for the month of November.

To see a list of weekly vendors and specials, visit their Facebook page at facebook.com/matsufarmmarket.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.