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Bicycle Benefits

Saratoga Farmers Market Kicks Off Outdoor Season at High Rock Park

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By Julia Howard

 

It’s finally here! For the first time in three years, Saratoga Farmers’ Market vendors will set up their stalls in the greenery of High Rock Park for the first week of May. The farmers’ market’s long-held tradition of moving outdoors in the spring will begin again.

What better way to kick off the new season than with a celebration? On Saturday, May 6, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., area residents are invited to High Rock Park as the Saratoga Farmers’ Market’s 45th season opens. Market-goers are invited to join local farms and businesses for a  ribbon cutting just before 9 a.m. Then, the market bell rings, music fills the air, and vendors begin offering fresh vegetables and fruits, meats, eggs, baked goods, prepared foods, and much more.

Burger Farm by Eric Jenks

“We are all very excited to return to High Rock Park for our 45th year in operation! We have a great lineup this year of vendors, including many who are returning and several who are new to our market,” says Mark Bascum, the market’s president. 

About 80 vendors will participate in the Saturday market. The Saratoga Farmers’ Market also operates on Wednesdays, from 3-6 p.m., with about 30 vendors.

Photo By Eric Jenks

Bring your shopping list and walk, bike, or drive to High Rock Park, where, twice a week, vendor stalls fill the pavilions and spill out onto the lawns. Grab a coffee made with locally roasted beans and perhaps a light breakfast from one of the many prepared food vendors featuring items like breakfast sandwiches, pastries, and single-serve yogurts with fruit.

And shop.

 

This year, we encourage you to visit the market via bicycle, if feasible. Purchase a Bike Benefits sticker at the market information table, and earn a $2 coin with every ride to the farmers’ market. We also invite you to bring your reusable shopping bags to reduce waste and the market will have totes available for purchase. We continue our compost collection program and will accept fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, tea bags, and similar items. We have an ATM on-site, and most vendors accept credit cards. We also accept SNAP benefits.

While shopping, check out the children’s activities like free face painting, and enjoy live music, and information from local non-profit tables.

See you there!

The Saratoga Farmers’ Market is open Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Wednesdays from 3 to 6 p.m. at High Rock Park in downtown Saratoga Springs. Find us online at saratogafarmersmarket.org and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Spirit of Sharing Fills Saratoga Farmers’ Market

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By Elizabeth Horgan

Euro Delicacies, photo by Pattie Garrett

The Saratoga Farmers’ Market is a great opportunity to meet up with others as you shop for the week. If you spend enough time at the market, you will start to see the sense of community that vendors share with each other as well as their customers. When shopping for ingredients to fill her ravioli, Mangiamo’s Rose Contadino stops by Halls Pond Farm, the produce vendor five steps from her stall. Meanwhile, Armin and Zinta Hrelja of Euro Delicacies use apples from Saratoga Apple for their apple strudel.

The vendors not only support each other but also the community. At the end of the Wednesday and Saturday markets, Squashville Farm’s Himanee Gupta-Carlson goes around to vendors to collect donations for the Franklin Community Center’s food pantry. Gupta-Carlson also coordinates a garden for the pantry. Meanwhile, Jim Gupta-Carlson facilitates the market’s compost collection program.

Owl Wood Farm, photo by Pattie Garrett

The market is a strong advocate of the Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, which distributes $4 coupons for produce to lower-income seniors and others, as well as the Fresh Connect program that provides SNAP recipients an additional $2 for every $5 of EBT tokens purchased at the market.

The market also connects with the community in other ways. Through a partnership with the Bicycle Benefits program, market-goers can purchase a $5 sticker and take advantage of discounts at local businesses. This is part of an effort to encourage the use of bicycles as a source of transportation through the incentive of discounts at local businesses if you show your sticker and that you biked to their location. At the market, participants in the Bicycle Benefits program receive a $2 token to purchase produce or other items.

Chris Toole and Alexandra Morgan are conveners of the Friends of the Market volunteer program, whose members assist market-goers with the transport of purchases from the market to cars, offer vendors the chance to take short breaks, and support the market in other ways. They are eager to welcome new volunteers, and those who are interested can stop by the market shed or e-mail volunteers@saratogafarmersmarket.org. Volunteering at the market has shown them what farmers go through to get their produce from the farms into people’s homes.

Riding Your Bike to the Farmers’ Market

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By Himanee Gupta-Carlson

 

Saratoga’s Bikeatoga group encourages people to get out of their cars and onto their bikes in the spirit of easing traffic as well as promoting good health, fitness, and fun. Now, the organization is partnering with the Saratoga Farmers’ Market to bring more bicycling enthusiasts this summer to High Rock Park.

Starting tomorrow, market goers will be able to buy a $5 Bicycle Benefits sticker at the market shed. These stickers will entitle purchasers to a $2 coin redeemable at a vendor’s stall of their choice each time they visit the market via bicycle.

The partnership brings the market into the community’s Bicycle Benefits program, a project that Bikeatoga’s Ian Klepetar founded in Saratoga about a decade ago. That project has since expanded nationwide. Its goal, says Klepetar, is to help build safer and healthier communities via bikes.

“Getting more people to realize their great ability to move with their own power is meaningful in a number of ways,” says Klepetar. “It creates a way to address the city’s biggest issues: safer streets, healthier humans, and noise, visual, and air pollution caused by vehicular traffic.”

The Saratoga Farmers’ Market shares similar health goals, which makes joining the Bicycle Benefits program a natural fit.

“Our vendors will benefit from having more bikers at the market,” says market administrator Julia Howard. “And by giving people an incentive to bicycle to the market, we will be able to ease traffic around High Rock Park.”

How Bicycle Benefits works is simple. Bicyclists affix their stickers to their helmets. Then, when they visit the market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, they can stop by the market shed at the south end of the High Rock pavilion and show the sticker to a market staff member or volunteer on duty. One $2 coin will be offered per day.

Those who purchase Bicycle Benefits stickers at the market also will be able to obtain discounts at other businesses who participate in the program.

Market regulars who live outside Saratoga can participate even if biking from home isn’t feasible by parking away from downtown where congestion is less and biking into the market.

The Saratoga Farmers’ Market is 3-6 p.m. Wednesdays and 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturdays at High Rock Park. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and check us out on the FreshFoodNY app. E-mail friends@saratogafarmers.org for volunteer opportunities.