Oyster Bay Farmers’ Market – Oyster Bay, New York
The Oyster Bay Farmers’ Market began inconspicuously enough, on just a few weeks notice during the Better Block event in 2010. There was no time to seriously recruit vendors. What we ended up doing is buying wholesale from a big box grocer and then selling out of a parking lot during a two-day community planning event. The feedback and support was so strong that this gave us the basis to establish a more permanent market – sans reselling produce.
Early vendors gravitated to the location around the bandstand. Every week the parking spaces immediately facing the bandstand would be blocked off, to give people room to move about.
From early on we had a mix of both food and handcrafted products.
One week we experimented going further down the street towards TR Park.
Eddie Armstrong was a highlight of the market. He raised chickens just outside of Oyster Bay. Every week he or a volunteer would bring in dozens of eggs to sell.