Blacksburg Farmer's Market draws big crowd
December 1, 2021
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By Chris Hirons and Colby Camardese
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From fresh fruit to fresh meat to fresh bagels, the Blacksburg Farmers Market had just about everything to offer on Wednesday afternoon.
It was a smaller set up compared to the bigger events on Saturdays, but local vendors, including Weathertop Farm and Blacksburg Bagels, still engaged and sold their items to the small crowd that showed up.
The market gives people another place to shop from local food suppliers and is the only one in the area that’s open year-round.
“With Thanksgiving wrapping up, we pretty much just ended our best season,” said Taylor Medley, who works for Weathertop Farm. “We sold just over 500 turkeys, but we also sell other meats like cows, chicken, animals like those. It’s fresh meat that people really love.”
For Blacksburg, the local farmers market is a popular place to buy locally grown food and products. Read about the live event from Wednesday afternoon.
Fresh bread from Blacksburg Bagels sits on a table.
The view from the Blacksburg Farmers Market
Weathertop Farm is a common site to see at the local farmers market.
Fresh bread from Blacksburg Bagels sits on a table.
The market is the best place to find fresh food that was made within the past few days, or even earlier in the morning. The owner of Blacksburg Bagels, which provides fresh bagels and bread to multiple restaurants around the New River Valley, said she woke up at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday to prepare her product for the market.
“It’s almost an everyday thing,” Marel Store said. “It’s a full-time job and I’m usually the one that stands at the markets. We employ students on a part-time wage so it’s kind of a bigger business than most people realize.
Just 25 days away from Christmas, vendors went from selling fall and Thanksgiving items to winter products such as wreaths, garland and even small homemade Christmas trees.
Though it didn’t include as many vendors as a Saturday event typically does, it still drew a decent crowd, even as the clouds hovered over Blacksburg, which vendors said that the incoming weather pushes customers away.