The 2011 season has been canceled for the Downtown Farmers’ Market, as reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Joe Bonwich. Patrick Horine, who helped get the market up and running for last year’s inaugural season and spearheaded organization efforts this year, told The Scoop that the market was canceled because “turnout last year was so low that the vendors did not want to take a chance on it this year, even with the new time slot.”
Earlier this year, it was announced that the market would operate from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., a change from last year’s 4 to 7 p.m. hours. “We were ready to do it,” continued Horine. “We had about 13 vendors, but there weren’t enough farmers in the mix. Maybe four farmers signed up and that’s not enough.”
Will Horine give the Downtown Farmers’ Market another try next year? “I haven’t written off giving it another shot,” replied Horine, who insisted that if someone else took over the project next year, “It will have to be somebody in the community [who] can convince the farmers to come out and give it a try. I’ll have to see where things are next spring.” In the mean time, Horine is keeping busy with the Tower Groves Farmers’ Market, which he is also the founder of and which will still operate regularly, as well as Local Harvest Café and the recently relocated and expanded Local Harvest Grocery, the latter two of which he owns with business partner Maddie Earnest.
This article appears in May 1-31, 2011.