CONNEAUT – People have come to count on the Conneaut Farmer’s Market over the last five decades.
Market Manager JoAnne Peavey and the many vendors at the farmer’s market are celebrating the relationships they’ve developed with the community members who have shopped every week during the summer over the last 50 years.
“They’re so happy they know when the market’s going to start,” Peavey said. “It’s hard to believe it’s been 50 years. I remember I sold once up there at the Conneaut Savings and Loan. I had a wagon full of pumpkins. I was so thrilled. I didn’t people would want you to deliver to their car. I was young. I was so excited.”
“I’m excited when my garden really produces. I’ve got really good customers that come,” Peavey continued. “I think everybody else pretty much feels the same way around here.”
The Conneaut Farmer’s Market began in downtown Conneaut in 1976. Peavey became the market manager approximately 20 years ago.
“Bob Fox (started the market) years ago, but I don’t know more than that,” Seavey said. “It was up at Conneaut Building and Loan at the time it started. It was there for quite a few years and then it went to the old Rite Aid building. I was a vendor and I ended up taking it because my heart belongs to Conneaut. I believe in Conneaut.”
The market, hosted in the parking lot at the Conneaut Moose Lodge, begins its season during Father’s Day weekend and is open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Saturday through the last weekend in September.
“We used to be open until October, but when the hurricanes that start coming, you get all that backlash from the lake, it’s just too bad. We lost too many tents,” Peavey said.
Everything sold at the Conneaut Farmer’s Market is locally produced.
“One thing about this market, not all markets are this way, but you have to be from within a 50-mile radius,” Peavey said. “If you don’t produce your own stuff from within a 50-mile radius, we don’t want you here because it’s not being local (if you’re from farther away).”
Vendors regularly attending the farmer’s market sell crafts, beef, honey, baked goods, wooden crafts, quilting items, flowers (early in the season), vegetable plants and some produce.
“We’d like more produce vendors,” Peavey said. “The problem I’ve had in the past is I had to tell people to leave because they were going down to Bloomfield to buy produce and coming up here and selling it. They have to produce their own products. If they don’t, we don’t want them.”
“What they make just fascinates me,” Peavey said. “If you really go and look at these crafters, there are some unbelievable things.”
Peavey is often impressed with the crafters’ goods.
“All these people, the crafters, there are some wonderful crafts,” Peavey said. “We got our bakery and it’s a family thing and they all work together. It’s really good. For years I turned crafters down. I had crafters ask why I didn’t have crafters.”
Regular visitors to the Conneaut Farmer’s Market are considered to be more than just customers.
“We have people who come every year,” Peavey said. “When they die, you feel bad because they were always here every week. It’s not the business we miss, it’s the person.”
“If you go to the store, you’re lucky if they even say hi to you,” Peavey continued. “People want to talk to people. Last week was so busy. People were just lined up talking. I think being able to get out, you don’t have that in stores.”
Peavey and the farmer’s market’s vendors are grateful to have a home at the Moose Lodge.
“We’re very thankful to the Moose Club,” Peavey said. “They let us use the parking lot. The Moose Club went out of their way and let us use this parking lot. We are so happy for that. They don’t charge us, but we always give a donation at Christmas. A lot of people say that we should go back uptown. I love the lake. I like it here. I don’t want to go back uptown.”
