For many of us, visiting the weekly Squamish Farmers鈥� Market is as much a staple summer activity as any other. Drawn by the opportunity to shop local, we rock up with reusable shopping bags and baskets, ready to carry home various veggies and goodies from our favourite vendors.
Within this tiny, inclusive marketplace, there鈥檚 also the added bonus of participating in something Squamish does exceedingly well: community. We bump into friends we may not have seen for weeks, midwives who delivered our babies, community leaders who help shape our town, and many, many familiar faces whom we greet warmly while scrambling to remember their names.
It鈥檚 a wonderfully satisfying feeling that, for a short moment, we can all experience.
This special quality of community is one that stallholders consistently mention as being unique to this town. When shoppers become friends, it can be one of the most rewarding elements of hosting a stall here, they say. Markets such as Whistler are transient in comparison. The foot traffic might be greater at times, but the guests are fleeting and the interactions frequently impersonal.
Perhaps that鈥檚 just one of the reasons our market vendors invest more time than we鈥檒l ever likely appreciate into supplying us with the things we love here.
While we sleep soundly, they lie awake worrying over things such as bees, animals, crops, deliveries and packaging. They sometimes work sleeplessly through the night, making sure the produce we get the following day is as fresh as it can possibly be. Wives, husbands, children and anyone willing to lend a hand are sometimes roped in, just to pull things off.
For some stallholders, the journey down this path began with a lightbulb moment or personal experience 鈥� good or otherwise. Others are following a passion, a desire to make their customers happy or an opportunity to realize a dream.聽
Many (if not all), are also juggling their market stand with raising a family and/or working elsewhere. Which is why, they say, it鈥檚 so rewarding when a customer takes the time to say thank you, or to share a personal story of how the product (or produce) has touched their lives.
And when shoppers are happy, stallholders are happy, and so too are the organizers and volunteers who sweat behind the market scenes. As shoppers we tend to just turn up and enjoy the event, but as the planners and coordinators, they do anything but. They鈥檙e Jacks and Jills of all trades who come rain or shine and throw themselves into whatever might be needed that day, from fixing generators to tents to neighbourly relations.
Our market exists because we embrace it, and we embrace it because it exists. Without it, our weekends would be vastly different, and so too would our relationships with food, the people who make it and even our community.
As the final summer market is held this Saturday, Oct. 31, and we move soon into the winter farmers鈥� market, the shift in seasons brings a shift in our habits and hobbies, and carving time for the market can be less attractive than carving lines in the powder. But the stallholders will still be there and only too happy to keep us fueled up for our journey, in exchange for us fueling theirs.
Editor鈥檚 note: Olivia Bevan is a previous market stallholder and has been writing our regular Market Insider columns for the past year. She takes a break shortly to have her second child but hopes to be back soon.
