OC Mag 01-22

| COMMUNITY
ORANGE CITY FARMERS MARKET
TIME: 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturdays in June-September
LOCATION: Downtown Orange City on Central Avenue
On the second Saturday of each
month, they host Kids Market, where
alongside the regular vendors, kids
can host a booth for free and sell their
products.
“We want to encourage those kids’
entrepreneurship and their creativity
and crafting,” Fahrenbruch said. “We
have elementary school girls who make
play doh, a high school girl who is a
phenomenal artist and some kids who
like to bake up some things to sell.”
The special Kids Markets days also
often include fun options for all the
kids who come to the market to enjoy.
“We always try to have something
free, weekly community event. extra fun for the kids at the market
All that combined would easily make from face painting or bounce houses,”
Orange City’s Farmers Markets a lot Fahrenbruch said. “Then also, pretty
more than your run-of-the-mill farmers
market, but they don’t stop there. market we have bubbles, chalk
much every Saturday of the farmers
and
jump ropes available for the kids to
play with.”
Another cool offering at the Orange
City Farmers Market is the Iowa State
University Extension and Outreach
program called the Power of Produce
or POP club.
“Every week kids can come and find
the Iowa State table and they will have
some sort of activity for them to be
engaged in like taste testing different
vegetables or doing a scavenger hunt
based around produce,” Miranda said.
“By participating, the kids earn a $2 token
that they can use to buy produce at
the market. It’s a great way to encourage
healthy eating and living.”
Another way the market seeks to
promote healthy eating and living is
that they have a number of vendors
who accept checks from the Iowa
Farmers Market Nutrition Program,
which consists of the Women, Infants
and Children (WIC) FMNP and the Senior
FMNP.
While the Orange City Farmers Market
seeks to be a community space for
people to enjoy and to encourage people
of all ages to live and eat healthy,
and a place for vendors to sell their
wares, the market is even more than
that to some people.
For the Fahrenbruchs for example,
the Orange City Farmers Market is
family.
“Our market really feels like a family.
The vendors watch out for each other
and we look forward to how the community
and family of the market will
grow each year,” Fahrenbruch said. “I
am excited about getting back to having
this weekly event. We love being
downtown and seeing the community
together and supporting local vendors
as well as downtown storefronts. It’s
really all about the community.”
SPRING 2022 | OC MAGAZINE 7