A guide to
Choose a market, prepare an application, and learn the rhythm of a selling day.
Start here
How markets are organized and why it changes what they ask of you, how to read a rulebook before you apply, what fees, insurance, and sales tax involve, what to bring, how the first morning runs, and how to judge the numbers after a month.
· 14 min read
About one in five U.S. farmers markets runs all twelve months, and others open a separate indoor season. Here is what a winter market looks like from the inside, what sells at one, what changes when you move under someone else's roof, and how to find the one nearest you.
· 8 min read
Sunset in Chicago falls from 7:17 p.m. in early September to 4:37 p.m. on the first Saturday of November. Some winter market deadlines passed in July, and your canopy weights have not moved since June. Work the list in deadline order.
· 6 min read
The USDA directory alone lists more than 7,000 farmers markets. Here is where to look, what a listing cannot tell you, and how two visits as a shopper and one conversation with the manager reveal whether a market actually needs what you make.
· 8 min read
A pop-up canopy is a sail with a price tag. What markets require for weights and how to attach them, when to drop the tent, how to keep product dry and cold food cold, and how you hear when a market calls it off.
· 8 min read
The farmers market is older than the country, and for most of its life it was a city service, not a movement. How public markets were built, nearly abandoned, written into federal law in 1976, and rebuilt as the nonprofit, mostly tent-based markets we sell and shop at today.
· 9 min read
Four USDA datasets count farmers markets in four different ways, and none of them shows the boom still running. Here are the numbers as published, what each one measures, and what they suggest for a vendor deciding where to sell.
· 9 min read
