Halfway through season, farmers market drawing crowds
CHERYL SCHWEIZER | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 4 years, 5 months AGO
Bao Xiang puts together a bouquet for a customer at the Moses Lake Farmers Market on Saturday.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Bao Xiang builds a bouquet for a customer at the Moses Lake Farmers Market Saturday.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Jhosue Guadarrama helps a customer choose a watermelon at the Moses Lake Farmers Market on Saturday.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Jhosue Guadarrama and his family have been coming to the Moses Lake Farmers Market for more than two decades.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Rachel Naff refills a box with summer apples at Moses Lake Farmers Market on Saturday.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Ryan Cox fills a bag with peaches at the Moses Lake Farmers Market Saturday.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Bao Xiong builds a bouquet for a customer at the Moses Lake Farmers Market Saturday.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Senior Reporter Cheryl Schweizer is a journalist with more than 30 years of experience serving small communities in the Pacific Northwest. She began her post-high-school education at Treasure Valley Community College and enerned her journalism degree at Oregon State University. After working for multiple publications, she has settled down at the Columbia Basin Herald and has been a staple of the newsroom for more than a decade. Schweizer’s dedication to her communities and profession has earned her the nickname “The Baroness of Bylines.” She covers a variety of beats including health, business and various municipalities. | August 17, 2020 11:46 PM
MOSES LAKE — The 2020 season at the Moses Lake Farmers Market is just past its halfway point, and so far it’s been a pretty busy spring and summer.
Of course in the spring and summer of 2020 other options have been limited.
“People are wanting to get out of their homes, I think,” said Ronna Woodward, of Royal City, owner of Ronna’s Pies.
Jhosue Guadarrama was doing a land-office business at his dad’s booth Saturday, presiding over apple bins heaped full of watermelons and ripe cantaloupes. Business was brisk on a sunny Saturday morning. “It’s been amazing, actually,” he said. “Pretty crowded.”
The Guadarrama family are veterans of the market, having made the journey from Royal City for decades. “We’ve been at this market for 23 years,” Guadarrama said.
The last couple of weeks produced a bumper crop of watermelon and cantaloupes.
“As soon as it gets hot, they all ripen at once,” Guadarrama said.
Woodward and Ronna’s Pies are well known at the farmers market, and she said it’s been a pretty good year. “The community has really supported us this year,” she said.
Woodward makes pies in the commercial kitchen at her home, and she was so busy she sold out before 10:30 a.m. She was taking orders to be delivered next week.
The crew from Tonnemaker Hill Farms, Royal City, was doing a brisk business in peaches and the first summer apples. Rachel Naff has been running the Tonnemaker booth for a few years.
“My job every Saturday,” she said, at least during the market season from May to October.
With the market season just over halfway completed, business has been pretty good, she said. Cold weather in late spring did some damage to the stone fruit crop, reducing its size. “It’s been an OK year,” Naff said. But people were lining up for white peaches at the Tonnemaker booth on Saturday.
Chonly Xiong and his wife, Bao Xiong, brought their fresh-cut flowers to the market, along with some vegetables. Flowers were selling at a steady pace, but Chonly Xiong, of Spokane, would’ve liked a little more business. “It’s kind of going OK,” he said. This is his first year in Moses Lake, he said.
Not all vendors sell produce or flowers. There was flavored popcorn and repurposed silver, homemade jam, and the Moses Lake Museum & Art Center.
The museum, of course, is closed and has been closed since March, which led to the unusual situation where the museum presented an exhibit no one could get in to see. So the museum staff has been working to find other ways to let the public know what’s going on, and a booth at the farmers market is one way to see and be seen.
Dollie Boyd, Moses Lake Museum & Art Center manager, was keeping count of the people who stopped by the booth.
“We’ve seen 158 people so far,” she said at about 10:30 a.m.
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached at education@columbiabasinherald.com.
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