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Community Corner

An Auspicious Opening For the Irvington Farmers Market

The Irvington market opened Wednesday; here's what's new.

The Irvington Farmer’s Market was buzzing with energy on its first day of the season Wednesday. The aromas of fresh-cut flowers, cheeses, breads, and Indian cuisine filled the air on the bright, sunny afternoon.

Locals were milling about, going from vendor to vendor, stocking up on the fresh products they'd missed all winter—as well as chatting with neighbors and friends. Patch spoke with the market's coordinator Pascale Le Draoulec, who described this season's new vendors: 

  • Neversink Farm is a culinary farm, whose owners both have backgrounds in the restaurant business. The farm has whole organic chickens, eggs, organic produce,and fresh-cut wildflowers. Le Draoulec is very excited about their organic chickens and blue eggs, both of which are humanely raised and grass-fed.
  • Fork and Glass is a street-food vendor that also caters using local ingredients. The owners, Sunny and Mark Gandara, are Norwegian and Mexican and make food from their home countries Additionally, they do food and wine pairings, wine dinners, and wine education courses. “Most catering companies really focus on just the food but we focus on the food and the wine,” Sunny said.
  • The Amazing Real Live Food Co. has fresh and aged cheeses and ice cream all with healthy probiotics. They also sell Ronnybrook fresh milk and all their products are from family-owned farms.

The Irvington farmers market features a new core committee, a new website , and fewer vendors this year due to the small space. This allowed the market to be much more selective, Le Draoulec said, since they now have one excellent bread vendor, one great cheese vendor, one great fresh fish vendor, etc.

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The market has tried to move toward all organic vendors this year. They feature three vendors with organic vegetables since they really “ramped up [the organic focus] this year,” Le Draoulec said.

The Irvington market features additional activities like:

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  • Live music every week
  • Yoga for kids from 4 to 5 p.m. on the lawn
  • Knitting tutorials in which senior citizens teach children the craft
  • An annual
  • One-of-a-kind t-shirts that feature vegetable names

Le Draoulec noted that the market was plagued with bad weather last year and that maybe their luck is turning. “This great start is very promising and bodes well for a very good season for us,” Le Draoulec said.

The Irvington farmers market runs from 3:30 to 7:30 every Wednesday in the parking lot.

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