HANCOCK COUNTY — The farmers’ market in Fortville was busy on a recent day when Gaye Garrett stopped by for the first time. Garrett had been looking for somewhere to buy sweet corn and noticed the market on her drive between her teaching job in Fortville and her home in Greenfield.
She found what she was looking for and left with a bag full of fat ears sold by a local farmer.
“I see there’s a lot more, too, so I’m going to have to stop again,” Garrett said.
Sweet corn is just one of the products available at the market, which is held on Thursdays in the parking lot of the Fortville Nazarene Church. The seasonal events will be held through the end of September.
Like other farmers’ markets in the area, the one in Fortville has had a growth year.
“We have some of the best vendors around,” said Joey Claus, a pastor at Fortville Nazarene Church who helps organize the market. “We’ve got really fresh produce, we’ve got wonderful organic meat products… If local produce isn’t your thing, we’ve got other options as well. We have T-shirts, jewelry, baked goods, we even have a knife and tool sharpening station.”
Farmers’ markets are a community effort, but one woman selling her wares at the Fortville event has an especially big impact. Barb Smith helped start the Fortville farmers’ market and still runs similar events in three Hancock County communities: Greenfield, New Palestine and Cumberland.
“It’s been going real well this year,” Smith said, adding that sweet corn season recently started and many patrons have been stopping by farmers’ markets to pick up the seasonal treat.
Smith and her husband, Earl Smith, run Blue River Natural Foods, which produces a variety of organic meats and produce. She started her career as an organizer of farmers’ markets, where Blue River also sells its own products, with the Cumberland market.
Smith and her husband were involved in the Hoosier Harvest Council, an organization of farmers dedicated to promoting locally sourced food, and were selling at the Greenfield farmers’ market downtown when its leadership stepped down in 2008.
“Nobody stepped up to run the downtown one,” Smith said, and it was becoming more difficult to close the streets for a weekly market. Smith decided Greenfield needed a farmers’ market, though, so she stepped up to run it and find a new location.
The Greenfield market has been running at the Hancock County Fairgrounds for several years, and Smith says it’s thriving.
“It’s working out great at the fairgrounds,” she said. “I’m actually turning away vendors this year.”
Several vendors who sold at the Greenfield location wanted to start a new farmers’ market in New Palestine, so Smith decided to expand. The New Palestine event in its first year and is off to a good start. It typically takes about three years for a new market to get off the ground and start growing, Smith said, but New Palestine already has a variety of vendors including one who makes custom flower bouquets and two food trucks.
“I’ve got a lot of happy vendors at that market,” Smith said. “It’s nice to have a market during the middle of the week.”
The Fortville farmers’ market has also grown this year, Claus said. He said the typical weekly event last year had 10 to 12 sellers but is now up to about 25.
“I think a lot of it has to do with the location change,” Claus said. “We moved it into this parking lot where we can spread out a little bit, so things are going very well.”
The farmers’ market was initially hosted by the Fortville-McCordsville Chamber of Commerce, which later became the Northern Hancock Chamber of Commerce. That organization now runs the market along with the church.
The Greenfield market currently has about 30 vendors, the Cumberland one 25, and the New Palestine one 20.
An additional farmers’ market in McCordsville takes place every other Sunday at 7724 N. Depot St. More information can be found at its Facebook page, The Market in McCordsville.
Smith said a farmers’ market offers visitors something that no grocery store, even if it provides organic or locally-grown options, can.
“They meet their neighbors, they sit and talk, they get to know the people that are making their food,” she said.