March 24, 2023

Greetings community, 

We hope this finds you thriving and enjoying the squishy ground while it lasts. It’s been quite an intense winter, and here at the Occidental Community Farmers’ Market we have been very busy germinating new seeds for the coming spring. We have been working hard to plan another season putting on a nourishing, safe, and joyful farmers’ market. Doing this in the small village of Occidental has had its challenges, as we’ve outgrown some aspects of our home in the “downtown” location on Friday nights. We are so grateful to our vendors, patrons, and the wider community for bearing with us as we prototyped the market at the community center at the tail end of the 2022 season, and for sharing your input in a series of surveys we conducted after last season. The community center market was a wonderful experiment and many of us marveled at how special it felt to be contained in that space. However, we have made the determination that the community center is not a viable location for the 2023 season, in particular given issues with egress, road safety, insufficient shade, lack of lighting, and size constraints, all of which take more time to address than we have. 

Given some of the significant challenges we also face in the downtown location on busy Friday nights, in the interest of supporting the economic sustainability of Occidental and the long term viability of the market, the farmers’ market will be switching to Thursday afternoon/evenings, and moving back to the downtown location, with the season opening on June 1, 2023. We look forward to a combined effort with local business and our beloved community to make Thursday nights even more of a special neighborhood night in town. 

We’ve heard from so many of you that the market is a really important part of life here in west county, and we hope this change feels good to you, even if a hard change to digest at first. Please join us in bringing good energy and joy to the heart of Occidental on Thursdays and continuing our long tradition of gathering in celebration of the bounty and creativity of our region. We really look forward to welcoming you back. 

We also invite your support in the form of helping us get the word out about our new night, get a strong turnout on June 1st, and secure sponsors of the 2023 market, as well as volunteering on market nights (volunteer signups will be posted via our newsletter before the season starts). 

Finally, we are so pleased to welcome Mary Sheila Gonnella of Occidental Nutrition to the OCFM steering committee.  Mary Sheila played a key role in founding the Occidental farmers market during its initial formation 20 years ago, served as a vendor, and is a champion of both our local community and healthy food.

With our warmest wishes for the year ahead, 

The OCFM team