Across the Greater Princeton area, farmers markets have become places to buy dinner, meet neighbors, support local farms, and build community
By Matthew Hersh | Cover photo from shutterstock.com
On any given day in Mercer County, the farmers market is rarely just a place to buy tomatoes.
On Thursdays in Hinds Plaza in Princeton, shoppers can browse produce alongside bread, flowers, and prepared foods. On Saturdays in West Windsor, the market at the Princeton Junction train station has become a regional institution, with vendors, musicians, and community groups occupying the lower Vaughn lot. Montgomery’s market brings regional farmers and food producers to the Municipal Center in Skillman. In Pennington, Rosedale shutterstock.com
(Photo by Sarah Teo)
Town & Country on Route 31 hosts a market that mixes farm products with music, environmental education, children’s activities, and community organizations. Hopewell’s market has grown into a Sunday gathering place built around a farmer-operated collaborative model. And in Trenton, farmers markets provide a different but equally important connection to fresh food in a city where access to healthy, affordable produce can be a challenge.
The markets vary in size, structure, and clientele. Some are organized by volunteers; others are run by farmers or nonprofit organizations. Some emphasize the direct relationship between grower and shopper; others operate as a hub that aggregates products from multiple farms. But what they have in common is basic: Come outside, buy something grown nearby, and meet the people who helped put it on your table.
New Jersey has plenty of opportunities to do that. The state Department of Agriculture has estimated that New Jersey has roughly 140 community farmers markets and 700 independent farm markets. The department describes farmers markets as places where consumers can meet farmers and better understand where and how their food is grown.
National growth has been considerable, too. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Economic Research Service, the number of farmers markets in the U.S. increased from 1,755 in 1994 to 8,771 in 2019, although that growth has slowed as locally produced food has become more widely available through grocery stores, restaurants, and other outlets. The USDA has also found that farmers markets can influence the farms that participate in them, as about two-thirds of vendors reported increasing production, while 77 percent said participation led them to increase the diversity of products they produced.
(Photo by Matthew Hersh)
But the numbers only begin to describe what is happening in between market days to better position a market presence that serves local needs while pulling in a regional consumer base.
At the West Windsor Community Farmers Market, manager Chris Cirkus has led the market, founded in 2004, as it has grown into a year-round institution that encompasses farms, food producers, artisans, musicians, nonprofits, and community organizations. For Cirkus, the most important part of that evolution may not be what shoppers see when they arrive. It is what happens among the vendors themselves.
“The community that is created within the farmers market, behind the scenes, and the relationships that I personally have with our vendors — connecting them to other vendors, connecting them to farmers for sourcing their ingredients — is the magic of the West Windsor Community Farmers Market,” Cirkus says.
Cirkus points to those relationships when she decides where vendors should be placed. A hot sauce maker might be positioned next to a pasta vendor because they can help one another; vendors with young children might be placed together because their families can become friends.
Cirkus described one vendor, David Bell, who has led his business, CAP·SAI·CIN, creating chili powders, hot sauces, and srirachas, for 15 years. Bell was introduced to the market through another farmer and Cirkus subsequently placed him next to vendors who could help his business, and those relationships eventually developed into friendships and shared resources.
“Everything that I do, from where a vendor is placed within the farmers market and who their neighbors are, is very calculated,” says Cirkus.
(Photo by Matthew Hersh)
It is a different way of thinking about what a market does, she says, emphasizing that the market is not only a place where individual businesses compete for customers, but it can also function as a small-business incubator, a networking opportunity, and a place where vendors share knowledge.
In Hopewell, Maria Diaz sees that dynamic from another angle. The Hopewell Farmers Market was created and is operated by farmers at Fairgrown Farm, whose collaborative model works with more than 40 partner farms throughout New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. The arrangement allows smaller farms to reach more customers while also selling their products wholesale.
The market may look like a traditional Sunday farmers market, but the network behind it is considerably larger.
Its lineup includes Fairgrown’s produce; Sourland Bread; Beechtree Farm’s meats, dairy, and eggs; Zell’s Farm mushrooms; Lee’s Honeybees; Pearl Coffee Cart; rotating baked goods vendors; and even a market library and “Blind Date with a Book” offering from Main Street Chapters.
Diaz said shoppers are increasingly interested in understanding what is behind the food they buy. “At the Hopewell Farmers Market, we’ve always emphasized knowing your farmer and knowing your food,” she says.
Recent food safety headlines have only heightened consumer interest. Consumers want to know where produce was grown, how it was produced and, increasingly, what happened before it reached their shopping bag.
(Photo by Sarah Teo)
“They aren’t just buying produce,” Diaz says. “They’re asking about the growing season, weather challenges, harvesting practices, and the story behind what they’re taking home.”
This year’s multistate increase in reported cyclosporiasis cases has put lettuce and other fresh produce back into the news. Local food is not automatically risk-free, and farmers market produce still needs to be handled and washed properly, but source identification gives shoppers something that can be difficult to obtain in a conventional supply chain: the ability to ask where their food came from.
At the Pennington Farmers Market, Joann Held says the food safety news produced an immediate response. Chickadee Creek Farm, one of the market’s longtime anchor vendors, began selling out of its greens as shoppers sought reassurance about locally grown lettuce.
“They’ve been selling out of their greens because people are coming to us like, ‘Is this safe to eat?’” Held says. “And we go, ‘Yes, this should be safe to eat.’”
Neither the New Jersey Department of Health nor the New Jersey Department of Agriculture had identified New Jersey-grown produce or local farmers markets as sources of the current cyclospora activity.
The Pennington market subsequently recorded its largest attendance ever — 633 people on a Saturday when Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space was also distributing native plant seedlings. The previous record had been in the 540s.
“There’s no middle person between us and you,” says Held.
That direct relationship is one reason farmers markets continue to occupy a unique place in the local food economy. They can sell food, but they also provide information, familiarity, and trust, and they are trying to make sure more people can participate.
(Photo by Sarah Teo)
The West Windsor market accepts SNAP benefits and matches purchases of fruits and vegetables up to $25. It also works with Yes, We CAN! volunteers to collect donations for Arm In Arm’s food pantries in Princeton and Trenton.
The USDA’s National Farmers Market Managers Survey found that half of the markets represented in its 2019 survey — 3,181 markets nationwide — accepted at least one federal nutrition program benefit. In the Northeast, the figure was 60 percent. The programs include SNAP, the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program, and the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program. About 35 percent of markets surveyed offered some kind of incentive or matching program.
West Windsor’s program is an example of what that can look like locally. Pennington is moving in that direction, too. This year, Chickadee Creek began accepting SNAP and participating in a matching program.
“We definitely want to let people know about the program,” Held says.
For Held, however, food access is only one piece of what a farmers market contributes to a community.
The Pennington Farmers Market is now in its 18th season. It averages about 11 vendors on a Saturday, although the number fluctuates because many are small, family-run operations. Some vendors come every other week or only during part of the season, allowing them to participate in multiple markets.
Held and the volunteer board have also learned that giving people another reason to visit can make the market itself more sustainable.
They offer a special event every month, such as Blueberry Day, with games and prizes for children. Local musicians perform. Community organizations are offered a table and tent at no cost. The library and historical society have participated; the League of Women Voters has appeared around voter-registration periods.
Held even has a strategy for Hopewell Valley Green Team, which holds a monthly recycling event at the market — she puts the recycling collection as far from the entrance as possible, so that people walking toward it have a chance to see other vendors.
“We really want all of our vendors to have a successful day,” she says.
Much of their work involves creating the venue for people to take it all in, browse, shop, and repeat.
“It’s got to be a habit,” Held says. “Like, this is what we do on Saturday morning.”
Cirkus has seen that same effect in West Windsor, where the market draws shoppers from well beyond the township. She estimates that only about 10 percent of West Windsor households shop at the market; the rest come from surrounding communities, including Princeton, Montgomery, Highland Park, New Brunswick, Edison, East Windsor, Hamilton, and beyond, creating an economic ripple effect.
People may stop at the farmers market and then get pizza, Chinese food, or groceries nearby, Cirkus says. They may fill up their cars or run another local errand. Musicians who perform at the market bring new audiences; high school performers introduce their families to a place they might otherwise simply pass on the way to work. The market also creates a kind of social infrastructure that Cirkus said cannot easily be reproduced elsewhere.
She has watched customers return week after week, sometimes for years. She recalled one longtime shopper who stopped coming after his wife died. Months later, Cirkus encountered him at a community event and reconnected with him. He began returning to the farmers market regularly.
“You cannot replicate that with a box being delivered on your front steps,” Cirkus says. “There’s something really so magical about running into the person that your kid played soccer with or your Hebrew school teacher from 20 years ago.”
In some instances, farmers markets can also serve as a proving ground for businesses looking to test their market before establishing a brick-and-mortar presence within the community.
Held pointed to Whispering Pine Books, which began appearing at the Pennington market as a pop-up before preparing to open a permanent storefront on Main Street. The farmers market gave the business a way to meet customers, test its market, and become familiar in the community before making the leap to a store.
In Hopewell, Diaz described a similar economic philosophy at a larger scale. Fairgrown’s collaborative model deliberately works with farms that may not have the capacity to reach every customer on their own. Instead of treating neighboring farmers markets as competitors, Diaz says Hopewell has chosen to share vendors.
“We’ve chosen to embrace collaboration rather than competition,” she says.
The approach makes sense in a region where a farm may be selling at a market in Hopewell on Sunday, West Windsor on Saturday, and somewhere else later in the week. The more markets that work, the more opportunities farmers have to sell. This regional ecosystem is interconnected by design.
There are the farms, of course. There are the market managers and volunteers. There are the musicians, community groups, teenagers setting up tents, environmental organizations distributing seedlings, shoppers using SNAP benefits, and families turning a Saturday or Sunday morning into a weekly ritual.
And then there is the work that happens before anyone arrives and after they’ve left. Insurance costs, health department inspections and approvals, working with other municipal agencies like public safety and public works, vendor coordination, and on-site management are all routine, time-consuming administrative factors.
There are permits to obtain, vendors to recruit, schedules to coordinate, and the careful choreography of market layout and design. There are weather forecasts to watch and, occasionally, tents to take down before the market even opens. There are vendors trying to balance multiple markets, farming, family responsibilities and the unpredictable demands of small business.
Farmers markets, in other words, do not simply happen — a prevailing credo that could serve as a motto for New Jersey’s market scene. And, as Cirkus puts it, the value is not only in what shoppers take home. The behind-the-scenes work, sweat, and planning results in what happens while they are there.
“Start local and go from there,” Cirkus said. “If the bulk of your dollars are spent within the local community, whether it’s a local business on a main street or within the farmers market, that matters.”
(Photo by Matthew Hersh)
Area Farmers Markets Include:
Princeton Farmers Market
Hinds Plaza, 55 Witherspoon Street
Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., through November 19
princetonfarmersmarket.com
West Windsor Community
Farmers Market
Vaughn Drive Lot, Princeton Junction Train Station; enter at 877 Alexander Road, West Windsor
Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., through November 21
Winter market: First and third Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., December-April
westwindsorfarmersmarket.org
Montgomery Farmers Market
Montgomery Township Municipal Center
100 Community Drive, Skillman
Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., through November
montgomeryfriends.org/farmers-market
Pennington Farmers Market
Rosedale Town & Country
101 Route 31 North, Pennington
Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., through November 21
penningtonfarmersmarket.org
Hopewell Farmers Market
52 East Broad Street, Hopewell
Sundays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., seasonal
Check the current schedule before visiting.
farmersmarkethopewell.com
Trenton Farmers Market
960 Spruce Street, Lawrence Township
Wednesday-Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.;
Sunday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.; year-round
thetrentonfarmersmarket.com
Schedules can change with weather and special events; check individual market websites before heading out.
