In September it came to our attention that there was no plan for running the Downtown Winter Farmers Market in Fort Collins this year. With leadership from Clinton Wilson, Executive Director of Poudre Valley Community Farms, the Foodshed Project collaborated with PVCF to ensure the market would happen. Sari Kimbell and Deb Fowler, community members with experience operating that market, agreed to run the market despite uncertain finances, and PVCF and the Foodshed Project provided funding and coordination.
We are also meeting with different farmers market stakeholders in Fort Collins to begin the conversation about how this new non-profit can make our great local farmers markets even better. Foremost on our list is to establish a permanent structure for the downtown market, but we also want to ensure that this effort doesn’t take away from the great work already being done, especially by those at CSU Extension who have been operating the market for >40 years. Please contact us if you are interested in assisting in this effort.
A couple of different models for a market structure are shown at right. Let’s get excited about this!
