07/09/2025
Hello everyone! Yes, it is true. We are no longer doing the Farmers Market and have canceled the upcoming dates. We weren’t sure if this would continue after the August dates based on the foot traffic since last October (our first market). Some dates have been better than others. Some dates had vendors packing up an hour early, not from selling out, but from no one coming by. Some dates had half the vendors no call, no show. Several dates had vendors "forget" about the market. For these reasons and more, we are just calling it quits now.
We spent a lot of time working on this market behind the scenes this year and last. It’s not something we are giving up lightly even though it may seem that way. This is/was a 100% independent farmers market. One of our businesses rents the building and we decided to put on a market in the parking lot. It’s that simple. There was no support from any officials or the town of OS…just us relentlessly posting on Facebook ourselves. No hard feelings, just sharing our experience.
Among other issues, we realized pretty early on this was going to be a lot of work and dedication for a FREE market. We know, we could charge. But as small business owners ourselves, we know how hard it is to get by and we aren’t trying to make money off of you all.
We already both own businesses, have new business ventures in the works and attempt to spend as much time as possible with our son and work on our wannabe farm at home. Our gut (and calendar) tells us there is no place in our lives at this time for managing a farmers market. And we admit, we didn’t realize how much time it would take to attempt to put on something unique for the area. Whoops.
To our vendors, you are the ONLY reason we thought about keeping this going. We truly loved the little Oliver Springs Farmers Market Community and your creations. How many treats did we always leave with?! We will miss parts of this, especially chatting and getting to know the other vendors. Because of this we’ve thought about hosting seasonal markets instead (summer, fall, winter/Christmas). These would (hopefully) be much larger and take place in the afternoon/evening. Yes, that’s only 3 big ones per year. We will see…
Thanks again to everyone that attended the Oliver Springs Farmers Market and we hope to see you seasonally!
-Alyssa and Eric Dale