Collaborators: Glen Roberts, ANR Agent, Terry Bertram, ANR Assistant, Danny Adams KSU Small Farms Program, Cassie Munsey, FCS Assistant, Farmers Market Vendors, County Judge, and customers

Situation:  The Downtown Farmers Market Facility could not comply with CDC guidelines.  We moved to property owned by the Wayne County Extension District Board.  They own a former Do-It Center lumber yard with lots of covered buildings and concrete.  It took a lot of 12 hour days and an industrial size dumpster to get the new facility ready, but we made it happen.  One nice perk of the new facility is that it has excellent public restroom facilities and the old one had portable toilets.  It is also level with plenty of parking and no curbs or steps to cause accidents.  The vendors could pull in the 48 feet deep bays and only unload what produce they needed to display for sale.  They could easily replenish their tables because their produce was right behind them.  The old location had main street running right in front of it with speedy traffic where the new location was one block off main street with much safer traffic situation and much safer parking too.  We had plenty of room for social distancing.  The number of customers was much higher partly due to a more intense demand to purchase local food and an improved customer friendly facility.  Vendors were fewer.  We knew they would be.  We anticipate a few more vendors this year , but still way below pre-COVID numbers.  

One side effect of using an extension owned facility was that Terry or I pretty much had to be there .  We both enjoyed it, but it makes Monday come pretty quick.