Farmers’ market to start opening on Thursdays

There’s good news for those who always seem to miss out on the Clover Valley Farmers’ Market every Saturday.
Starting this week, the market will be open Thursdays from 4-7 p.m. alongside their usual Saturday hours.
The new hours hopefully will attract more vendors and shoppers who otherwise would not use the market, said manager Carley McCormick.
“We’re just trying to round up some new vendors, a different crowd, and get people used to coming Thursdays as well as Saturdays,” she added.
“We find that, to get vendors, there are some vendors who don’t like to give up their weekends,” McCormick noted. “So we think a Thursday evening might attract some different new vendors, as well.”
By opening the market on a weekday evening, McCormick also hopes to attract those who are heading home after a day’s work and otherwise would not be coming back into town on the Saturday.
“We’ll see how it goes. It’s an experiment,” said Pat Clysdale-Cornell of Cornell Farms. “But hopefully we’ll see some new faces; some people who are maybe unavailable to come on Saturday because they go to the lake.”
Many of the people who come on Saturdays are tourists, noted Clysdale-Cornell.
“We have lots of tourists here, it’s amazing how many tourists,” she remarked. “Just this [Saturday] morning, I had a person stop and they were on a cross-country trip.
“They’d been from Quebec City . . . all the way to Victoria and back.
“So opening up the market on the evenings will hopefully get in the locals who can drop in before the head up to the lake on the weekend,” she reasoned.
“I guess we just want our local people to come out,” echoed McCormick.
Depending on how popular the Thursday date is, the hours might change as well, she added.
Saturdays will remain the same, including having special events, said McCormick, but if the Thursdays are a huge hit, there’s the possibility of completely switching to the evening market.