By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — If you grow it, can it, pickle it, paint it or make it, you can sell (and buy) it at the brand new Caribou Farmers Market opening on Wednesday, June 15. Located at 159 Bennett Drive (in the former Bureau of Motor Vehicles parking lot), the market will be open on Wednesdays from 3 to 6 p.m. and on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesdays seem to be attracting more vendors than Saturdays at the new market, but Interim Chamber Director Jenny Coon is excited whether there are four vendors or forty.
“We’re an agriculture-based community and this gives local growers an opportunity to showcase what they’ve worked so hard to produce,” she said, stressing that the market will also provide an opportunity for more people to “buy local.”
Working with the chamber, Cary Medical Center (CMC) is making it easier for vendors to sell their wares by paying all the market’s vendor’s fees for the first year as part of their Healthy Hearts Healthy Community program, made possible by a grant from the AstraZeneca HealthCare Foundation.
One of the goals of the grant is to support local agriculture and to increase access to fresh native produce with a focus on fruits and vegetable, according to CMC director of community relations and development Bill Flagg.
Vendors wears range from meat and dairy to produce and crafts, all offered by local producers.
Vendor space is sill available at Caribou’s new market; for applications, rules and regulations, please visit cariboumaine.net or call Coon at 493-4233.
