Frederick City Market returns for 2024 with local produce

People meandered around the vendor tents at the Frederick City Market Sunday, perusing the different meats, produce, flowers and other goods the vendors had to offer.

Sunday was the first day back for the Frederick City Market. It will continue each Sunday on North Market Street between Third and Fourth streets until late November.

There were 23 vendors on Sunday, Rachel Gagne, a co-manager of the market and a vendor herself, said. There are 23 vendors scheduled at the market every week until the market is over, she said.

The market has been around since 2011, Gagne said, and she’s sold at the market since then. Her business, Pineline Poultry and Meats, sells beef, pork, poultry and more.

The market takes locally produced goods seriously, she said. In order to sell at the market, she said, vendors must produce their goods within a 150-mile radius of the market.

Additionally, there is a sense of family in the Frederick City Market that Gagne said she hasn’t experienced elsewhere.

“We’ve always seemed to form a really cohesive community here at this farmers market. We’re all happy and upbeat and we portray that out to the customer,” she said.

Ben Sayler, another vendor, agreed. Sayler has been selling his produce from Pleasant Hill Produce, a farm in Walkersville, at the market for 11 years.

He loves selling at the market because it’s one of the only ways he sees his customers face to face. He has regulars that have bought from him since his first year, he said. He’s seen their families change and grow, he said.

And that kind of relationship is not something you can get with produce managers at a grocery store, he said.

“Food is one of the most intimate parts of anybody’s life,” he said. “It’s what actually keeps them alive and to be able to share what I do for a living with them and talk to them about it and to actually have a relationship with your customer, that’s what this farmer’s market is all about.”

That intimacy is part of why Katie Cook makes the Frederick City Market a mandatory stop when she goes grocery shopping. She buys what she can at the market, as well as other farmer’s markets, and gets the rest at grocery stores, she said.

“I’d rather support the farmers here than buying it at the supermarket, and everything I get here is delicious,” she said.

Gracie Fultz and her boyfriend, Danny Allen, were at the market with their goldendoodle Lucy. They always stop by a vendor who has dog items for her, they said.

Not only is it nice to support local businesses, they said, but the market is also convenient.

“I feel like it’s hard to go to a bunch of separate places, but when they’re all together, it makes it really accessible and nice,” Fultz said.

Cook, holding the flowers she gets every time she shops at the farmers market, stopped by John Damskey’s tent to buy meat. It was the first time they’d seen each other since last year, they said.

Damskey sells meat products from his farm, Diparma Farms in Washington County.

Like Gagne, Damskey said there is a special sense of community at the Frederick City Market. And like Sayler, he emphasized the importance of shopping locally rather than going and buying food at a grocery store.

“When you spend local, you support your farmers. Twenty dollars to a family farm means that I can send my kids to college and I can put clothes on their back and buy them food. When you spend $20 at Walmart, they really don’t care and they don’t miss you,” he said.

Every vendor here, himself included, miss their customers when they leave, he said.