Fresh goods, economic boost at farmers market

Plants, produce and pasta — everything that makes a farmers market.

Wait a minute, pasta? At a farmers market?

Why not?

Flour City Pasta is the newest addition to the Fairport Farmers Market, which enters its fourth weekend Saturday.

“They’re located down in Canal Works, the old Turk Hill Office Park,” said Mayor Fritz May, who also serves as market manager. “What’s really cool is it’s a village resident who runs the business. They make everything with organic ingredients. It’s dried pasta, so its shelf life is good.”

Jon Stadt said business has been great since he opened his small pasta shop. He makes about 60 varieties by hand, about a dozen of which are featured at the weekly farmers market, staffed by his niece, Fairport native Chelsea Stadt.

Stadt has been distributing a Denver pasta to several stores and at the Regional Market in Syracuse, but said there was only one organic product. He got his own pasta-making machine about nine months ago and began experimenting, later opening Flour City Pasta.

Items sold at Fairport Farmers Market must be locally produced, so this is the first year Stadt was eligible to join. He gives out recipes with his each pasta variety, matching them with in-season produce being sold at various times during the season.

“It’s been a great fit for us,” Stadt said. “We hand out recipes with all our pasta. That way the people can walk down through the market with our recipe in hand and they can get the rest of their fresh ingredients right at the market.”

May said the vendors at Fairport Farmers Market are like family, helping one another out as they serve their customers. Items up for sale and the number of vendors vary as the season progresses.

“Right now, we’re in plants, baked goods, fruits and vegetables, honey and maple syrup,” May said. “We have homemade crafts.”

May said there were 60 vendors last weekend, up from 48 on Mother’s Day weekend when the weather was windy and cold. Besides looking for fresh plants and produce, a lot of people enjoy getting out and visiting.

“It’s the place to be,” May said. “It’s just a social happening on Saturday. “The other thing is, it really does play into the economic climate of the village. There are stores that open early when the market season is on because of the business they get that is above what they normally get. It works both ways. Sometimes people come to shop and go over to the market.”

East Rochester is regrouping
East Rochester won’t be having a farmers market this year — it was cut from the village budget.

Village Administrator Marty D’Ambrose said the cost became prohibitive, and the market wasn’t “meeting expectations.”

He said the village spent about $8,000 a year to pay overtime to two village clerks who worked the market.
In addition, the village paid a stipend to a marketing manager, cleanup costs, administration, advertising and incidentals. That’s in contrast to Fairport, where May volunteers his time to work at the market.

East Rochester vendors were not charged to set up at the market, and D’Ambrose said vendors rebuffed the proposed addition of a fee. In addition, he said, more often than not, only a handful of vendors and a handful of people showed up. D’Ambrose said the village had a good core group of vendors, but that the market was never brought up to the level officials felt was needed.

“It became very cumbersome to deal with,” D’Ambrose said. “It wasn’t achieving what we had hoped it would achieve. We felt we needed to take a step back and do this right. We’ll get our ducks in order on the concept. We’ll try to build a volunteer team that will man them. We’ll streamline the whole thing, remove a lot of the expense and charge vendors a nominal fee.”

He said the village hopes to bring the farmers market back next year.