A new market out at 'The End'

Recommend

Comment

Email this article

Print this article

Get news alerts

RSS Feeds

Share Digg Mixx Linked In Facebook Twitter Delicious

The East Hampton farmers market in the Nick and Toni's parking lot on North Main Street Fridays.
Photos Kyril Bromley

see all images

A new farmers market will open in Montauk as early as next week, following in the spirit of an East End and nationwide movement to buy and eat locally grown goods.

After several months of planning, Laraine Creegan, the president of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, said she has scheduled the market for Thursday mornings from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. at the St. Therese School grounds, although the opening day has still not been finalized.

Ms. Creegan said she has been waiting for the East Hampton Town Board to approve the market’s mass gathering permit and she also has been slogging through insurance paperwork, but hopes to finalize everything and have the first market on July 16.

Participants will be able to sell their wares at the market “if you grow it, bake it, or catch it,” Ms. Creegan told the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee last month. “A lot of it is what we want to do. I think people were pretty happy with that.”

Fishermen and farmers from Montauk and Amagansett are eager for a local venue to sell their goods from the land and sea, Ms. Creegan said. She said she is looking for more local Montauk participants.

Right now she expects plenty of local fishermen, along with Rita Foster of Rita’s Stables, who started growing organic vegetables this year, farmers from Balsam Farm and from Amber Waves Farm in Amagansett. Proceeds from the vendor fees will be donated to the Montauk Food Pantry.

“There’s been little negative feedback from local merchants,” Ms. Creegan said. “You’re talking about four hours on Thursday mornings.”

Members of the Montauk CAC all supported the venture at the June meeting in a rare moment of unanimous positive agreement.

The Montauk farmers’ market will be the latest addition to a farmers’ market bonanza on the East End that started five years ago with a market in Westhampton Beach on Saturday mornings. The market, started and run by Elsie Collins, now has 35 vendors. “I don’t think anyone has a market any larger than that,” Ms. Collins said.

Sag Harbor followed suit the same year with a market that began during the Sag Harbor Harborfest, thanks to the work of Brian Halweil, a Sag Harbor resident and member of the Advisory Council of Slow Food International. The market continued for the rest of the month and in 2005, six vendors started selling their goods every Saturday morning. The market now has 15 vendors, which the village mandated to be the maximum.

In 2006, Joseph Realmuto, the executive chef of Nick and Toni’s restaurant, which already had its own small garden in the back of the property, started a farmers market in the restaurant’s parking lot on North Main Street in East Hampton on Friday mornings. Last year it had 10 vendors and this year it has grown to 21.

In 2009, the desire for farmers markets has been as abundant as the rainfall was in June. Michael Denslow, who also runs the Sag Harbor market, started a market on Friday afternoons at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton. Bonnie Cannon, a Southampton Village trustee, has just obtained approval for a farmers market on Sunday mornings in Southampton Village, most likely in the parking lot behind the Parrish Art Museum. The Wölffer Estate Vineyard is hoping to do a market on Sunday afternoons outside the vineyard’s wine stand on the Montauk Highway in Sagaponack. And, of course, there is Montauk.

“Farmers markets are huge community builders,” said Kate Plumb, who ran the Sag Harbor market, now runs the East Hampton market and also was a founder of the EECO Farm on Long Lane. “It’s not just about buying the good food—everyone at the table has either grown it, caught it or produced it, so you know where your food comes from and there is no travel time—but it’s what happens at farmers markets,” said Ms. Plumb.

“People meet each other and see their neighbors so you’re building community,” she said. Markets give customers the opportunity to ask vendors questions, she added, like how they make cheese or the difference between when cows are grass-fed or grain-fed.

“We’re losing so many farms to development,” Ms. Plumb said. Markets help farmers to survive, as they can sell goods directly to customers, without middlemen, she said. “We want to encourage younger farmers to get into this. Markets are one of the ways they can make a living.”

The farmers market industry is one of the fastest growing segments, if not the fastest, of the food business nationwide. In 2000, there were 235 farmers markets in New York State. By 2006, that number had increased by almost half to 350, according to the latest available data from the Farmers Market Federation of New York State website.