For many vegetable farmers in Saskatchewan, the summer (or non-summer) of 2010 will be one to forget.
Rick Letwinka is not one of those farmers. He had one of his best growing years he can remember.
“It wasn’t the easiest of summers, but it was abundant,” said Letwinka, the operator of Heliotrope Organic Farm. “Those thunderstorms make everything grow.
“People think of the weather from their perspective, like it should be sunny and warm all the time, but the vegetables grow like crazy when it’s wet.”
That translated into a decent summer for Letwinka at the Regina Farmers’ Market, which held its final outdoor day of the season on Saturday.
The market is to move indoors starting this coming Saturday at the Cathedral Neighbourhood Centre (2900 13th Ave.).
Wet, cool weather blanketed much of Saskatchewan for the summer, forcing small- and large-scale operations to work through the mud with some having some acres of land flooded out. A tomato blight left many farmers’ market regulars without any of the fruit for the summer.
Even Letwinka, who counted this as one of his best growing seasons, lost 10,000 hills of potatoes.
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Tim Shultz, one of the operators of The Green Ranch, near Fillmore, said this past summer is one he’s ready to put behind him.
“We didn’t have many flooding issues, but it was the cool, wet, working out in the mud all the time … it’s been a challenge for sure,” he said.
“We never lost anything because of water on the ground, but it has been a challenge. Harvesting has been the biggest thing and controlling weeds. But it has been excellent the last couple weeks since the ground dried up.”
While the market was bustling on its final outdoor day Saturday, that hasn’t been the case all summer with a new location for the twice-weekly market.
Because of construction on the City Square project near the market’s usual home on Scarth Street, it had to be moved to Smith and McIntyre Streets, on the east and west sides of City Hall.
The result meant more space for vendors and customers, but also led to lower sales, particularly on Wednesdays.
Being just a few blocks further from the largest downtown office buildings meant fewer workers taking in the market during Wednesday lunch breaks.
As for the spacing of the area, market manager Ada Bennett said there were two schools of thought.
“For some of the older consumers, it was quite a walk to get all the way around,” said Bennett. “But others sort of liked that relaxed feel of it and taking their time.”
Count GerriAnn Siwek among the latter group.
“It’s more accessible to me because I come on my bike so it’s a little easier to manoeuvre,” she said. “It used to be that you had to walk right up the middle and it would be very crowded. Here you can just go up one side and down the other.”
There will be even more space next year when the market is scheduled to move to 12th Avenue and Scarth Street in late June when the City Square project is complete. While there were 90 vendors this year (some of which didn’t come every day), Bennett hopes to see over 120 vendors in City Square. Any interested vendors can find more information at http://www.reginafarmersmarket.ca.
“By the time a couple of years pass, I would say that we’ll be the largest farmers’ market in Saskatchewan,” she said.
Until then, farmers’ market regulars will have to make do with the indoor sale over the winter.
“If it were nice, there’d be better sales outside for sure,” said Shultz. “But we’ve done the winter sale the last two years and we’ve had really good sales inside too. That first market takes time for people to get used to the change, but then it’s pretty good.”
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