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Bicycle Benefits

Spirit of Sharing Fills Saratoga Farmers’ Market

By

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

By

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.