Over the years we’ve spent many a summer break in France visiting numerous plum days, donkey days, bread days, basil days and farmers markets. In fact to be truthful market visiting had been top of our list for places to visit apart from visiting beekeepers too. We have been known to arrive as a farmers market is being set up to watch how things are put in place and even received a tour by a market manager explaining how the electrics for a market happened. I’ve even got photographs of their electric boxes used
We noticed that in some of the towns extra farmers markets started to appear in the Summer which took place in the evenings. The evening events looked very community focussed social events very similar to the farmers markets in England when we became involved in farmers markets in the early 2000s.
For the last 7 / 8 years we had been looking to find a suitable location to run a Summer Evening Farmers Market very similar to those we’d seen in France. We approached all our existing locations where we run farmers markets about this idea over the years but didn’t receive a positive response.
About 18 months ago we saw a little facebook post about a local venue looking to expand on the events they offered. We duly emailed in with some ideas we had for events at the site but focussed on the possibility of the site being used for an evening farmers market. We were surprised to receive an invite to go and discuss further.
The site was perfect – lovely location, hard standing for ease of stalls setting up, space for stallholders vehicles to drive in off load items and park. We couldn’t believe our luck when after all the years of searching an evening events was what was being looked for.
We met several more times, recruited stallholders and started to plan all the publicity. With weeks to go til the launch COVID hit with the first national lockdown all plans for the Summer Evening Farmers Market had to be put on hold and no events including the farmers markets could be held for the rest of the year. We were really disappointed especially as we sat at home on the days the summers evening farmers market should have been taking place in beautiful sunshine.
Earlier this year we received an email to see if we’d still like to organise the Summer Evening Farmers Market in 2021. Some of the stallholders we’d originally recruited to attend had changed direction with their businesses. As this was a completely new farmers market we looked to invite some new stallholders who we couldn’t accommodate at some of our other markets plus a mix of stallholders from across the existing farmers markets that we run.
The first Summer Evening Farmers Market at Danson House, Danson Park, Bexleyheath took place on the 2nd Thursday of May 2021. The Mayor of Bexley attended the farmers market with Council Officers meeting and greeting all customers. The sun shone and it was lovely to see so many new people shopping local and supporting small businesses.
The Stupid Idea has now become reality
Dates for the Summer Evening Farmers Market at Danson House, Danson Park on the 2nd Thursday of the month are:
- Thursday 13th May 2021
- Thursday 10th June 2021
- Thursday 8th July 2021
- Thursday 12th August 2021
- Thursday 9th September 2021
Open between 6pm and 8.30