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 2^nd 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 2^nd Thursday of the month are:

• Thursday 13^th May 2021
• Thursday 10^th June 2021
• Thursday 8^th July 2021
• Thursday 12^th August 2021
• Thursday 9^th September 2021

Open between 6pm and 8.30

As people are aware we took the difficult decision to postpone the farmers markets we operate when the Lockdown was announced on 23 March. It was a hard decision to make however we wanted to honour the Stay At Home message and ensure the health and safety of our customers and stallholders.

Between the end of March and in to June 2020 as a small business we have tried to support many of the stallholders who continued to provide the products which would normally be available from our Farmers Markets. 

A number of the businesses changed to providing home delivery of their products on a very regular basis around the areas of the farmers markets we operated. We’ve helped promote the services they offered, helped set up delivery services, updated the website when we could and used social media to promote items available too.

Following the announcement that Open Air Markets could reopen on 1^st June we have spent time looking at how social distancing can be put in place at the farmers markets whilst looking at all the other items like hand sanitizing, gating market areas, stewards, risk assessments etc., that will need to be in place before we can reopen.

Each of our farmers markets has it’s own individual issues relating to social distancing – some of the markets are held in High Streets where we will have to work alongside the shops that surround the market area and ensure queues don’t impact the market – with these markets we will be waiting until mid June with the reopening of more shops to see the impact this has. 

Hall Place Farmers Market  is in a location which is still behind locked gates with no access to the public – when the site reopens here it is likely that a one way system will be introduced, so the farmers market will have to work alongside the measures in place there too. 

Our aim will be to ensure that the farmers markets are as safe for customers and stallholders to attend as possible. We’re busy talking to the different Partnerships that we liaise with to be able to re open the markets with their support

Once we know the re opening dates for our markets we’ll post this on the website

We have been running the farmers markets for a long time now but we haven’t organised an evening farmers market so far.

We got the idea for Summer Evening Farmers Market about 10 years ago whilst holidaying in France where they run additional evening markets during the Summer which are very popular. It’s an idea we have been working on for a number of years but we have been looking to find the right venue to run them.

We believe we have found the right venue in Danson House. It’s set overlooking the award winning Danson Park, and is a Grade 1 listed Palladian villa which was officially re opened by HM Queen Elizabeth II in July 2005. The Summer Evening Farmers Market will be held in the surroundings of Danson House.

We are looking forward to offering our first Summer Evening Farmers Market on Thursday 14 May and then the 2nd Thursday of the month up to September.

Update: 1st June 2020. We postponed the May Summer Evening Farmers Market in response to the COVID 19 situation. Subsequently we received notification from Danson House staff that no events would take place at Danson House until at least October. This is to allow their staff to focus entirely on the day to day function of the building which is as a Register Office. We’ll continue discussions with Danson House staff later in the year.