Concord Farmers Market enters 45th season with abundance of offerings and sustained commitment to promoting local agriculture

An early harvest of salad mix and arugula will saturate Kearsarge Gore Farm’s booth at the Concord Farmers Market with greenery on opening weekend. As spring becomes summer, peas will join the abundant display on the corner where Capitol and Main streets meet, then garlic, scallions, kale and chard.

The farm has had a showing at the market for about ten years, according to Sarah Hansen, who runs it alongside her husband, Sam Bower, and his parents. Time and again, they return with the offerings grown organically on their 500 acres at the foothills of Mt. Kearsarge.

As the market’s seasonal opening approached, the family planted summer squash and cucumbers, glimpsing the yield of weeks to come. Hansen expected tomatoes to go down next.

Each year at the Concord Farmers Market, which will enter its 45th season on Saturday, vegetables transmute into conduits for human connection under the shade of the vendor’s tents.

“There are so many vegetables that I see every day that feel commonplace to me and I think I take for granted, but customers get so excited about them,” Hansen said. “And I love that little spark where they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, this bunch of chard is just calling me, like, I had to stop and I’m buying it because it just was saying my name.’”

The farmers market, active since 1981, mobilizes vendors of various ages, backgrounds and levels of experience with their craft or agricultural enterprise, including New American families who sell some non-traditional produce through Fresh Start Farms. The well-regarded Saturday-morning enterprise has enjoyed sustained success, maintaining a member-run institutional structure. For the public, it has reliably refreshed downtown with the buzz of activity after the thaw of a long winter.

It’s a hallmark of summer in the capital city, starting the first Saturday of May and ending the last Saturday of October.

Each season brings a natural progression from the year before: Some vendors have retired, while others have emerged to take their place. They sell a variety of products from native plants to bacon to cookies, cakes and pies. Guest vendors, like Barbara George, who aren’t bound to the obligations of full-time vendors, change the face of each market. This season will have one additional market than last year, owing simply to the alignment of the calendar.

But, for all intents and purposes, “it’s the same old market people know and love,” according to Wayne Hall, owner of Rockey Ole’ Farm in Concord and president of the market’s board of directors.

Hall rattled off a lengthy list of items sold across vendor booths each year, ending with the obvious: “veggies, of course, the best fruits and veggies in the state of New Hampshire.”

It’s important to Hall and his fellow board members, including Nancy Flowers-Mangs of Wild Berry Farm in Sanborton, that the market remain grounded in its mission of promoting local agriculture.

“The Concord Farmers Market is really dedicated to being a farmers’ market — not a street fair, not a craft fair,” Flowers-Mangs said. “Usually, we have small-scale farmers; they’re out there planting and cultivating.”

Many farmers make value-added products that present as artisinal crafts, providing opportunities to diversify their income and to talk to the public about where everday items like soap and wool come from, she said.

The market provides a unique opportunity to encounter processes made invisible by the refrigerated aisles and plastic packaging of grocery stores.

“It’s a great place to shop, but it’s also a great place to know your farmers,” Hall said.

Apple Hill Farm – Concord

Diane and Chuck Souther remember the earliest permutations of the Concord Farmers Market, its start in a parking lot downtown outside the former Department of Justice building, which has since been demolished to pave the way for the legislative garage.

Fifteen years ago, the couple was traveling across the central New Hampshire to markets in Tilton, Manchester and Bedford to sell their produce. One market folded, another moved too close to a busy road for pedestrian and vendor comfort. Concord, their hometown, stuck for more reasons than one.

Despite the dearth of accessible parking and absence of public restrooms downtown pose challenges, which Diane chooses to view as “mixed blessings,” she said the opportunity to sell directly to consumers is an important one for farmers. Apple Hill Farm was designed to be a seasonal farm, with a harvest that stretches from spring through Thanksgiving, a timeline that aligns with the farmers market’s season.

The first weekends will see fresh herbs, jams, pansies and other flowers and plants. Strawberries arrive in June, blueberry bushes begin to ripen soon after and the farm’s fruit trees are ready for harvest as summer cools into fall.

Part of the success of each summer is inevitably left to fate.

“Let’s hope for good weather,” Diane said. “Last year, the first 13 markets that we had, it rained every Saturday. Let’s hope for a sunny day.”

Community Supported Cold Brew – Concord

Rebecca Rocheleau and Zack Sheehan had seen cold brew concentrates in stores, and for all their potential to blunt the bitterness of hot-brewed coffee and deliver a cold beverage that hadn’t been diluted by a melted heap of ice, those options fell short of their expectations.

In 2022, they decided make their own, appealing to friends and family for their feedback before turning to the Concord Farmers Market as their outdoor storefront. Currently, customers won’t find their cold brew anywhere else; their license, which covers poured drinks, enables them to serve lattes and coffee beverages and to bottle their concentrate for people to experiment with at home, but only face-to-face at the point of transaction.

For the two Concord natives, the market, as with the city itself, has become a home. Prospective customers come in all shapes and sizes: some are familiar with cold brew, others are simply looking for their morning fix of caffeine, while a few are still venturing out of their comfort zone to try an inventive beverage they might never have an opportunity to replicate on a hectic weekday morning.

From black cherry cold brew seltzers and strawberry vanilla lattes to mochas rich with chocolate milk and Vietnamese coffees mixed with sweetened condensed milk and, of course, a crisp and unfussy cold brew, their booth caters to all palates.

“It’s fun to be able to tell people that that’s what we’re doing and to be able to say, ‘And if you want, you can take home a bottle of concentrate right now.’ We’re showing you ways to play with it, and you can choose your own adventure,” Sheehan said. “It’s fun to peel back the curtain, so to speak.”

For steeping and storing their brew, Rocheleau and Sheehan rely on Twelve 31 Café & Catering, an eatery located across the street from the State House, a convenient spot for market vendors. Location plays as much a part in their success as timing: Some markets are in the afternoon or early evening, when people don’t generally drink caffeinated beverages.

Rocheleau and Sheehan, who both work for local nonprofits, the market’s greatest strength, though, is the atmosphere of positivity and connection it fosters.

“It’s fun to make the coffee and sell it, but it’s really, really nice to be part of something like the Concord Farmers Market and become part of the community of vendors and more enmeshed in the Concord community,” Rocheleau said.

Auntie B’s Greek Pastries – Bedford

On Thursday evenings, Barbara George ends her shift as an executive assistant at a nonprofit, a part-time job she took in her retirement, and heads into the kitchen of her Bedford home.

With her hands, she forms Koulourakia, the braided butter cookies her mother would bake, in batches as large as 500, for their church’s yearly barbecue fundraiser. She works through Fridays, when she typically has the day off, and rises before the sun on Saturdays to prepare fresh baklava rolls for the farmers market, coating them in a honey syrup. Her sliced pinwheels buck convention — the dessert is normally baked in a pan — but they emulate her mom’s design, and to George, that’s what matters most.

At Auntie B’s booth at the Concord Farmers Market, she offers a taste of her own childhood: the powdered Kourambiethes and savory Spanakopita that link together an unbroken generational chain.

“Whatever my mom did, she was a really good baker and I didn’t want to waver from that,” George said. “I’m here to continue the legacy, I learned from my mom but she learned from her mom.”

George is relatively new to the Concord Farmers Market; this is her second season as a guest vendor and only her third year in business.

As a guest, Auntie B’s will be at the market sporadically, starting with two Saturdays next month: May 2 and May 16.

The Concord Farmers Market is open on Capitol Street from 8:30 a.m. to noon every Saturday from May through October.