A summer of change for Gig Harbor’s farmers markets

There’s no shortage of farmer’s markets on the peninsula, with markets in downtown, Uptown and at Peninsula Gardens.

The Gig Harbor Farmers Market, which used to run at Skansie Brothers Park, found itself seeking a new location and headed to Uptown for a Sunday market. With that market moved after its permit was not renewed by the city, the Waterfront Farmers Market debuted downtown.

Gig Harbor Farmers Market manager Dale Schultz wanted to put the Sunday market in Skansie Park as well, but was unable to get a permit from the city.

“(The park) was not going to be used. Period,” Schultz said.

After the summer switcheroo for the markets, the relationship between the Gig Harbor Farmers Market and the city has been tenuous at best, Schultz said, but the move to Uptown turned into “a fine little market.”

For the Waterfront Farmers Market, run by the Downtown Waterfront Alliance, the first year was a success that was also full of change. Now in its final week of the year, market manager Kathleen Rose handed the reins over to the alliance in late August. A new market manager has come on board at the alliance already.

Rose’s position will be rolled into a new position which incorporates both managing the market and working on special alliance projects such as Girl’s Night Out in November. That position will be taken on by Heidi Gerling, formerly a program director at the Cheney Family Branch of the Boys and Girls Club.

Alliance president Pat Schmidt said Rose stepped down from the market to spend more time with her family and the alliance then decided to transform the position into a year-round commitment.

“We needed someone to do the full picture,” Schmidt said.

Gerling was brought on for her experience in event planning, grant writing, social media and web design, Schmidt said.

The market is in its last week, finishing up the year on Thursday (Sept. 24).

The Gig Harbor Farmers Market opened a new location at Uptown this summer, which ran from April to September and featured produce, flowers and crafts, as well as live music. Schultz declared the new market a success.

The Sunday market at Uptown had about 15 to 18 vendors each week, with about 10 vendors being crafts and others selling seafood, cheese, produce and flowers. Three farmers visited the market weekly, Schultz said: Artondale Farms, Hayton Farms and Gig Harbor Flower and Vegetable Farm.

The Uptown market will finish up with an 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. market on Sunday (Sept. 27).

The flux in markets began last fall when the city announced it would not renew the permit that allowed Schultz’s summer market to operate in downtown Skansie Brothers Park. The city accepted a proposal from the alliance to put together the new market.

At the time, City Manager Ron Williams sent Schultz an email saying the city wanted to move away from a market that included craft-focused vendors. The markets run by Schultz at Uptown and Peninsula Gardens still offer crafts from local merchants.

The waterfront market, on the other hand, wanted to bring in produce vendors from around the area. For Ken VanBuskirk of Davis Farm in Belfair, that’s appealing.

“One of the things about this market is it’s strictly local producers and farmers,” he said.

The Waterfront Farmers Market had about 1,000 visitors a week shopping at the more than 20 vendors in Skansie Brothers Park, according to a Sept. 14 release from the alliance.

The downtown market benefited from a relationship with the City of Gig Harbor, which provided seed money to start the market and hire Rose as director.

The summer market season may be ending, but there’s still a market for residents and visitors to check out that runs into the winter.

The Gig Harbor Farmers Market hosted indoors at Peninsula Gardens will keep running through the end of the year, offering peninsula residents a way to get direct-to-consumer goods while in the bleaker months of the Washington fall. It closes Dec. 19.

This story was originally published September 23, 2015 at 10:05 AM with the headline "A summer of change for Gig Harbor’s farmers markets."