Get Fresh! Waterford Farmers Market Opens Saturday

If you're in the market for vegetables this weekend, then you should go to the market! The Farmers Market at Waterford Town Hall kicks off its fourth season this Saturday, with fresh produce, locally-made cheeses, locally-raised beef, pork, and chicken, fresh eggs, desserts, humus, soaps, and so much more. 

Teresa Schacht of Hunts Brook Farm in Waterford is the unofficial market master, but she credits the market's existence to Melissa Guarnieri. "She was a real powerhouse getting it going," said Schacht. 

Surprisingly, Guarnieri isn't a local farmer. She's just someone with a passion for locally-grown, organic food who decided that Waterford needed a farmers market—and she did the heavy lifting when it came to getting all the permits needed to make it happen.

The farmers' market, which starting this weekend will be held every Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon, has grown like summer corn ever since. This year, Schacht expects 13 to 14 vendors, plus guest vendors, to set up shop in the front parking lot of Waterford Town Hall. 

A number of them—such as Hunts Brook Farm, Fog Plain Gardens, and Secchiaroli farm's piggery—are based right here in Waterford. Others, such as Cranberry Meadow Farm which brings beef and honey from East Lyme, Niantic's Smith acres, and Oak Leaf Dairy, which brings dairy products, goat's milk cheese and even goat's milk soap from Lebanon, come from slightly farther afield. 

At this weekend's market, you'll also find ready to eat fresh made products from Ivy's Homemade; hummus, baba ganoush, baklava and flatbreads from Yantic; Bread and Cookies from New London; and soft cheese from Mystic Cheese Company. 

"I don’t know what he puts in it," says Schacht. "It's some kind of magic."

"We’re doing really well," says Schacht. "We have a great core market. There are different farmers markets all over the state. There are big ones and smaller ones, we are medium-sized. We don’t have music or animals. We have great, rocking farmers that bring local wonderful produce." 

As the season progresses, you can expect to see more and more farmers arriving with an even greater variety of produce. This Saturday, however, there's a veritable cornucopia of fresh vegetables including lettuce, kale, chard, napa cabbage, fennel, cole rabe, beets, scallions, sugar snap peas, broccoli, radishes, broccoli rabe, bok choy, parsley, summer squash, zucchini, early corn and strawberries. 

The Farmers Market also sets aside a table for nonprofits—this weekend it will be Habitat for Humanity—and Ecoscapes, an organic landscaping company out of Quaker Hill, will be on hand for the first two markets.  

"We try to cover everything," says Schacht. "It's all there. So come shop!"