I’ve been driving by this sign for a week or two now, and finally had a moment to ask about it at Parks & Rec. Unfortunately for people who liked the Friday Farmers Market at the American Legion, this is not a third Farmers Market. It seems that that one hadn’t been doing as well as the Cold Spring Park one, and some people from West Newton (I don’t know who you are, but thank you!) asked if it could be held in West Newton. Businesses in the vicinity were okay with the idea, so it’s being moved to Elm Street. Literally. It’s not going to be in this vacant lot that I wrote about awhile back; they’re going to close Elm Street between Washington Street and Border Street. And it will be on Saturdays instead of Fridays, 10am-2pm, from July to October, so it will be an option for people who work weekdays.
And another reason to visit West Newton Square. 🙂
Julia, thanks for posting this. I am VERY excited about bringing the Farmers’ Market to West Newton every Saturday starting July 5 and running through October. There is a lot of competition among community farmers markets, and unfortunately the market at Post 440 was not as successful because it was on a weekday. In order to attract more vendors, Parks & Rec considered moving the market to a new location (Post 440 is not available on weekends) and moving it to Saturday to make it a success. That began a search for a new location.
There are many people who made this possible, but I want to call out several city officials and a West Newton community activist who really made it happen. Bob DeRubeis, Commissioner of Parks & Recreation deserrves a lot of credit for giving this a chance and arranging meetings with all of the stakeholders, aldermen, and city personnel to work out the details. I also want to thank Judy Dore in Parks & Rec, who does such a terrific job organizing the Farmers’ Markets in the city at Cold Spring Park, Post 440 and the indoor market at the Hyde Center. She has already come up with over 20 vendors who want to come to West Newton’s Farmers’ Market, including a few local businesses who want to participate. Sgt. Jay Babcock also deserves a shout out. The group that met to explore possible sites for a Saturday market couldn’t find an ideal location because of parking, traffic and space issues, including several locations in Newtonville and West Newton. Sgt. Babcock came up with the idea of shutting down a part of Elm Street, as the city does every year for the Paddy’s Road Race, and then working out the logistics to make it happen. And kudos to everyone else who works for the city who helped out. Talk about a CAN DO attitude!
Finally, I want to thank Rick Dinjian, from West Newton, whose involvement with the Newton Community Farm as a Board Member and advocate for producing food locally was the catalyst for relocating the Farmer’s Market to West Newton and moving the day from a weekday to Saturday to give it the best chance of success. His vision and perseverance really made a difference. I also want to mention that the owners of the lot at the corner of Elm & Border, who will be starting construction of the mixed use development there that will create 3 retail and 4 residential units in the heart of the village, have pulled a building permit and cleaned up the lot in preparation to begin construction. They are on board with this and do not plan any construction on Saturdays when the Farmers’ Market will be going on.
Please come shop for local produce at the Farmers’ Market in West Newton Saturdays from 10am-2pm starting July 5. I am really looking forward to seeing you all there!
I am excited too but they couldn’t have closed down the next street over or that little chunk of Border street? now MBTA has to redirect buses adding an extra level of complication to making this happen!
Anyway very excited, will likely stop by after being on the bus up to the Waltham farmers market!
John_on-Central, in order to make this work, we needed the cooperation of local businesses and the NPD. Because the city has closed Elm Street in the past for Paddy’s Road Race, Sgt. Babcock felt this was the better solution. Elm Street from Webster to Border Street and all of Border Street will remain open so that the many businesses located there as well as the municipal parking lot between Elm Street and Cherry Street will be accessible. I am happy to say that everyone is totally on board with this.
BTW, the Waltham Farmers’ Market has moved to a new location.
Really looking forward to a Farmers Market on Saturday!! The City has been terrific in terms of dealing with the local businesses, and making certain that everyone’s concerns were heard and addressed. I second the “thank you’s” to Rick Dinjian, Judy Dore, Sgt. Babcock, and Bob DeRubeis.
I am so excited that there will finally be a farmer’s market that’s not held during work hours!
I’m excited about this since it’s right around the corner and is within easy walking distance. I’m hoping the prices are reasonable.
Me too, because it’ll be on my way home from the Y. 🙂
I’m surprised that this farmers market is on a Saturday as there is also one in Waltham on a Saturday morning which no doubt will result in a reduced number / split of vendors between the two. That said, the Waltham one used to be on the corner of Moody and Main St’s and that site is now under construction so it’s not clear where that market will relocate to. Either way, this is great news as there is nothing better than fresh produce from the farmers market.
Peter, please see my post above. The Waltham Farmers’ Market has relocated to the corner of School Street and Lexington at the government center parking lot. The group that met to organize the West Newton Farmers Market included representatives from the state farmers market association, and we did discuss competition for vendors with the Waltham Farmers’ Market. We were assured that both farmers’ markets would be able to attract sufficient vendors and customers to make a go of it. Thus far, I am informed that West Newton will have 23 vendors, including several local businesses in the village and the Newton Community Farm.
How is this going to affect Saturday Parking for the local businesses. For example the Village Bank, MT Nail Salon or Paddy O’s ??
The municipal lot will still be available and only a short section of Elm Street between Washington and Border is being closed for the farmers’ market. The organizers have talked to the businesses in West Newton that will be affected and the support thus far has been overwhelming. Once people come to the farmers’ market, we all hope they will stay and enjoy some of the restaurants, shops and cinema that West Newton has to offer.
Hello, Ted – my name is Marc – in 1991, I was one of the founders of the Waltham Farmers’ Market. I’m not sure where those assurances you mention came from — my understanding is that the representatives from the statewide organization were completely opposed to moving the market to West Newton on Saturday to directly compete with Waltham. My colleagues at the Waltham market were concerned about the change, but did not oppose it — partly out of respect for long-time colleague Judy Dore, and partly because of assurances that West Newton would be a very small market, whose major purpose is as an outlet for the Newton Community Farm. At 23 vendors, it’s not looking that small any more. For the record, Waltham organizers offered to host the Newton Community Farm at the Waltham market, but were told that would not fly. Despite relocating after 23 years, the Waltham Farmers’ Market will certainly “make a go of it,” but now I worry that farmers and other local producers may not find participating in either large market to be a worthwhile venture with so much competition nearby. Most of Waltham’s densely-populated Southside is a 3- or 4-minute drive from either market — for Waltham vendors this will be just like adding a whole bunch more farmers to their market. For customers (many of ours live in West Newton), more is better, but for farmers this may be a difficult expansion. I wish your market and your farmers good luck and success anyway, and hope you are beating the bushes to find new customers for this wealth of local produce and products.
Ald. Jim Cote and I would like to thank everyone who was responsible for making today’s first Farmers Market in West Newton a fabulous event. The weather could not have been better (well, it was a little gusty), and there was lots of produce, fruit, vegetables, fish, ice cream, lemonade and other offerings on sale, all of it locally grown! There were people already waiting at 10AM when Judy rang the bell, and by noon, we already had over 500 customers–and people were still coming, arriving on foot, on bicycles and even a few by car!
Twenty-three vendors, including a number of local businesses and organizations, have signed up. The Newton Cultural Alliance was there to promote the restoration of the historic Nathaniel Allen House in West Newton, Green Decade (including Margaret Ford and her turtle) were there to promote the environment, Susan Paley from Village Bank was handing out free bags (so no one had to use those nasty, environmentally harmful plastic bags), and other local businesses like Wally’s Ice Cream were all on hand. We even had some candidates for office and folks with various petitions collecting signatures. WNTN radio, NewTV and the Newton Tab were all there to cover the opening day, and the reviews were universally positive.
Special thanks go to our market manager extraordinaire, Judy Dore, who managed to pull all of this together in an unbelievably short time to make it an unmitigated success, Rick Dinjian and the Newton Community Farm, who put in a lot of effort drumming up local support and helping find vendors, and Sgt. Jay Babcock, who came up with the idea of closing off a section of Elm Street to hold the Farmers Market. And Bob DeRubeis, and his “can do” attitude, helped make it all happen. Just awesome. Thank you all.
Rick and Judy are still working on getting more vendors, and in particular a meat producer to go with the fish vendor who was there today, Boston Fish. So come on down to Elm Street in West Newton every Saturday from 10AM to 2PM through October 25. Later this summer we will have peaches, sweet corn and other terrific produce.
We look forwarding to welcoming you to West Newton.
@Marc, I confirmed with Judy Dore today that the West Newton Farmers Market is not poaching vendors from the Waltham Farmers Market. We had a lot of folks from West Newton, Auburndale, Newtonville and other parts of Newton who arrived mostly on foot and by bicycle (West Newton has not just one but two bicycle stores and many bike racks for parking). I can only assure you that Judy and I and everyone else involved in the West Newton Farmers Market want for both of our markets to succeed, so that everyone in each of our communities has access to locally grown food.
Thanks for the reply, Ted – not sure why you commented about poaching — I had no complaint about that and already know that Judy wouldn’t do that, or anything, to harm our market. My gripes were that you mischaracterized the involvement of Mass Farmers’ Markets, who were completely opposed to Newton opening a competing market on Saturdays, and that I had been assured, by Mr. Dinjian, that a West Newton Saturday Market would be very small, which it is not. Two Saturday markets, 2 miles apart is good for Newton & Waltham customers, not so much for our vendors. We’re trying hard to attract NEW customers, I hope you are too — that is what it will take for these two markets to thrive.
Marc:
I for one will be going most weekends to the one in West Newton, but rarely if ever went to the one in Waltham. It was just a bit far for me, and there are farmer’s markets downtown and in Brookline I could have just as easily gone to during the week from work. If the venders are not poached, I’d say the 10 minute drive is far enough to separate out the two markets. But I guess I’m saying that as a consumer and not a market seller…
I wish that the hours of the market were a bit longer. My wife and I didn’t make it over to Elm St. until a little bit after 3pm, at which point the street was completely cleaned up – hard to believe that there had been a market there only an hour earlier! Strong cleanup work by DPW and/or the market organizers.
We went over to the Albemarle Field celebration afterward, which looked to be quite fun from a kid’s point of view, with lots of amusement rides and food trailers.
But does anyone know when the 4th of July flea markets got so small around here? Maybe it’s my memory playing tricks on me, but when I was a kid I always believed that the one in Needham took up the whole of Memoral Field. Now there are only two or three vendors. The booths at Albemarle Field seemed to have been limited as well.
Also, I have one completely unrelated question from our July 5th drive around town – does anyone know why all of the beautiful old trees surrounding the Oak Hill fire station have been knocked down? I’d thought that any construction of temporary quarters was going to be limited to Nahanton Park and not the site of the fire station itself. The Station 10 grounds used to look beautiful, but now it looks like a tornado came through and leveled everything. And those trees will be tough to replace since they were probably 60-100 years old.
PS as for the competing markets, now that we know about the one in Waltham and the one in West Newton, my wife and I will likely visit and make purchases at both of them. (So long as we don’t get started too late in the afternoon that is!)
I think that farmers’ markets in the suburbs are the type of business that stimulate more spending rather than compete for peoples’ dollars. Particularly when the products are unique…we can’t get enough local strawberries, blueberries, peaches, etc. to counteract the awfulness of the transcontinentally-shipped crapola at all of the supermarkets.
Hi! Where can I apply to the West Newton Market?! I am a newer vendor & can’t find the application!!
Caroline, contact Judy Dore at [email protected]. She is the coordinator of the West Newton Farmers Market.