Pittsfield Farmer’s Market
Upcoming farmers market for 2010.
Pittsfield
Farmer’s Markets
Days * Locations *
Times
Thursday: Senior Center
Harvest FM, North St
3:00pm-7pm
Friday: Palace Park
Berkshire Harmony FM, North St
11:00am-6:00pm
Saturday: Park Square
FM, Bank Row
8:00am-1:00pm
Welcome
There are exciting events happening in downtown this summer and the Pittsfield Farmer’s Markets invites you to be on center stage for all this fabulous attention.
Let us to tell you more about it, we don’t want you to miss it.
The Pittsfield Farmer’s Markets begin June 17, 18, and 19 and go every week through the November 6th celebration of the 200 Anniversary of the “First County Agriculture Fair in America” held in 1810 on this same historic Park Square site.
The Park Square Farmer’s Market, Saturdays from 8am-1pm is the crown jewel of the three markets where we welcome a widely diversified audience of local destination shoppers as well as an array of impulse drive-by guests whose attention we capture at the busiest intersection in the Berkshires. After all, retail is all about location, location, location and one would be hard pressed to find a better farmer’s market site in the Berkshires.
Stalls are located along the newly re-constructed bricked area on Bank Row on the south side of Park Square at the intersections of North, South, East, and West Streets in the center of downtown Pittsfield, the heart of the Berkshires.
Abundant free parking is accessible along both sides of the surrounding Wendell Avenue and South Street and in the Colonial Theatre parking lot on South Street, all within the market’s block. Additional free and/or paid parking is easily available throughout the neighborhood beginning less than a block away.
Creative arts, entertainment, and cooking demonstrations are bonus attractions to enrich the experience.
The Palace Park, Berkshire Harmony FM, Fridays from 11am-6pm is swiftly moving in the direction of becoming a specialty market due to its limited space.
This FM is most likely to be the first market in the state, if not anywhere, to feature naturally grown, earth friendly and synthetics free, bio-intensive (double digging, intensive planting), carbon-negative (biochar enhanced), and nutrient dense (natural mineral enriched) practices for growing the highest quality, nutrient rich produce available. These approaches embrace the qualities of organic growing and go beyond without necessarily being certified.
This claim of QUALITY is differentiated from the products of other growing techniques based upon a measurable difference on a Brix Refractometer, and is defined by flavor, touch, appearance, extended shelf-life along with its high value, nutrient rich content of the produce and well beyond just superlatives.
Range raised chicken eggs, grass fed animal meats, and a selection of authentic hand crafted food artisans’ creations are headliners as well.
The Palace Park FM location is smack in the heart of the downtown shopping, business, and government offices district, but the uniqueness of the high quality specialty products and creations will be its calling card for good food fanciers from in and around the Berkshires.
Quality and Convenience will be superior here.
Lunchtime shoppers will be encouraged to shop now and pick up their produce and specialty items later after work or to have them delivered.
We will launch the convenience services like “easy drive thru pick up, free and fee home and office delivery services for shoppers, and eventually on line ordering for shopping the vendors without the need to visit the market” in this market before rolling these services out into the other markets. Sign up for our RSS feed or visit us on Facebook or Twitter to keep posted to our latest activities.
We will also be doing outreach from Palace Park for the Berkshire Harmony sponsored Gardener’s Exchange program with a focus on introducing and creating new gardener’s, community growers, and small plot farmers for deploying the most advanced growing techniques, skills, and holistic farm integration methodologies into their thinking and growing processes.
Brown bag lunch on a park bench lecture series focusing on the “How to”...grow more food closer to home will be a sideline attraction of the market. Other subject areas including the “techniques for growing the highest quality produce available right in your own backyard or community garden.”
When permitted, we plan to offer cooking demonstrations at this market featuring vendor’s products.
The Senior Center, North Street Harvest farmer’s market, Thursdays 3pm-7pm, is best for accessing produce vendors since this market primarily serves the WIC and Senior Market Coupon Shoppers and SNAP EBT card user community from within the nearby neighborhoods. This is truly a local neighborhood farmer’s market. A colorful local activity every Thursday as well as the eventful “Third Thursday’s Evening Promenade Downtown.”
We offer the community easy access to farm fresh produce and products thru three convenient locations at different times on different days to serve them better.
Join us in creating a powerful community social network online and on site.
Jeff Winslow (Wild Sage) and Barry Hollister (Berkshire Harmony) are the producers of the Pittsfield Farmer’s Markets in collaboration with Yvonne Pearson, Pittsfield Downtown, Inc. a 501 ( C ) 3 not-for-profit corporation.
For additional information contact:
Barry Hollister
Berkshire Harmony
Market Master
Pittsfield Farmer’s Markets
413 447 7522
Farmer’s * Authentic
Culinary Artisans * Creative Arts*
Market Vendors and
other interested in learning more about market opportunities, the rules,
participation procedures, and to meet and greet are invited to join
us at an open public meeting Tuesday, June 8th at 5:30pm at the Berkshire Museum,39 South St. directly south of the Park Square / Bank Row site.