By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

The Bridgton Farmer’s Market transforms the depot street area every Saturday: offering up rows and rows of local raw produce, and creations from the harvest such as jams, jellies and pickled beets, organic meats, homemade baked goods and Maine-made jewelry. Some Saturdays, live music fills the air as customers browse from booth to booth.

As the days get deeper into October, the crowds come later. Still, the faithful customers do their shopping at the market to get locally grown fresh food. 

Next Saturday will be the last outdoors market of the year. Then, on Nov. 12, the market will resurface indoors at a new space.  

On Saturday, Market Manager BrennaMae Thomas-Googins, who also co-owns Patch Farm in Denmark, reflected on how the 2022 season has gone and also on what the new space has to offer. 

“We are excited about the new location,” she began. 

Starting on Nov. 12, the market will shift to the Oriental Masonic Lodge #13 on Harrison Road, she said.  

“It has got a big beautiful parking area, which has always been a bit of a struggle. Because we are growing more and more as a market, we need more parking,” she said.

“It is warm. It is going to be really nice big open space. We were not able to expand at the last couple locations because [the buildings] were a little small,” she said. 

For two years, the winter market spot was the former MacDonald’s Motors building off Nulty Street. Prior to that, the winter market was held inside the United Methodist Church, which lacked parking. 

“With the larger space indoors, we can continue to welcome new vendors,” Thomas-Googins said.

Inviting more vendors to the summer market is one of the improvements, she said. 

“2022 has been amazing. We added four new vendors,” 

Visually, the number of people appeared to be the same as last year. But considering that the crowd is spread between four additional vendors, it’s highly possible more people visited the market this summer, Thomas-Googins said.

The market manager said the summer crowd tends to be ‘early birds’ and the fall farmer’s market customer is a different animal.

“In the summer, it is incredible. It is like people are right on mark. What happens in the fall around Labor Day is definitely we see a shift and people start coming later in the morning. But that is mostly because it is chilly and foggy. That is kinda nice we have time to take a deep breath and get fully set up,” she said. “But in the summer, it is 7:55 and people are already asking for sales.”

“It is great. It is still trying to put food on the table as a producer and trying to make sure I have food to last the whole time. We usually run out,” Thomas-Googins said. 

She commented on a weather-related trend in the autumn. 

“It is interesting because days like today [Saturday, Oct. 23] when it is super sunny and bright out after rain coming last weekend and rain coming again, we are very slow. It is a gorgeous day and everyone thinks people are going to come to market. And, they don’t. They go out and go hiking and stuff,” she said. “We tend to do better during drizzlydays because people want to get out and about, but they don’t want to make a big commit to go to the beach or go hiking or whatnot so they come here to the market.” 

“It is amazing without fail our year-round customers are going to show up any time of day, any type of day,” she laughed.

“They are the reason why we are holding the winter’ farmer’s market. Locals and non-locals alike were asking for us to keep going,” she said, referring to the evolution of the indoors farmers’ market.    

“With the winter market we get to roll right into winter with the same great set of people who support us all season long no matter what the weather is,” she said. 

She provided a list of some of the food that can be found at the market over the winter months.

“Storage vegetables like celeriac, turnips, red onions, white onions, shallots, storage radish, rutabaga,” she said. 

“At Patch Farm, we grow through the season things like kale, spinach, lettuce mix, indoors, in our greenhouses. We do have greens all winter long that come to market, alongside other storage greens like Kohlrabi, and cabbage. We try to have as much variety around the year as we can. Because in Maine, there is a lot of need for it,” she said.

Thomas-Googins said the winter market always mixes it up, varies from week to week. 

“We have our winter membership. We always have 10 vendors through the winter. Then we have different vendors who come in and out, crafts people who have other commitments during the holiday season. You are always going to find your core vendors at our winter market all season long. There is always someone new popping in. It is always fun to come in and see,” she said. 

Next Saturday (Oct. 29) is the last outdoors farmer’s market of the season at Depot Street.

“We’re going to have live music, tasty vegetables and amazing baked goods. What more could you need,” Thomas-Googins said.

There is a short lapse between the last outdoors market and re-opening indoors in the winter market space on Nov. 12.

“We take a week off. It gives our farmers one of our two weekends every season. But then none of us know what to do. We always feel like we should be packing up for market on Saturday,” she said.