Marshfield Farmers’ Market in full bloom

By Adam Hocking

Editor

MARSHFIELD—Every Saturday and Sunday during the summer the Festival Foods parking lot is the scene of a local farmers’ market.  The market runs from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.  showcasing locally grown produce, flowers, and handmade crafts.

Vendors from Marshfield and the surrounding area come each week to display the fruits of their labor.

Jim Hartman, from Athens, said this was his second year at the farmers’ market.  He sells organic chicken raised on his son’s farm.  Hartman described a sense of community among the vendors.

“The sellers are all willing to help each other, and it’s just a lot of fun.  I enjoy it,” Hartman said.

Pachia Xiong sells vegetables and flowers from her parents’ Stevens Point farm at the market.  She said she enjoys seeing what other vendors bring to the market and has noticed the selection of goods increasing since her family started coming to the market five years ago.

“Being able to see what everyone else can bring to the table is wonderful,” Xiong said.  “The variety of what we have here is great.  There’s bakery, there’s vegetables all over, there’s even an egg roll stand, now there’s even a carpet stand.”

Dustin Schlinsog, who runs Turnpike Greenhouse in Granton along with his wife Brenda, said that this market requires everything sold to be home grown or made by the vendor.

“It makes for a very good market and a lot of variety,” Schlinsog said.

That variety includes the hand carved wooden figurines made by vendor Howard Poeschel, who displayed a chess board in which the pieces are painted to resemble the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears.

The market opened in July and will run through October 29^th of this year.