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Plans for the 2013 Bounty of the Barrens Farmers' Market continue to evolve. First, you should know that we have one more winter market, on April 13th, at the Cooperative Extension Service office on West Main Street. This will be an exciting day as it will also be the Extension Service's Earth Expo Day. Our vendors will be out in the parking lot along with many other exciting exhibits that day. We hope you will be there.
The next weekend, April 20, will be our opening day on the Glasgow Courthouse Square, and what a day we have planned! That morning there are a number of exciting community events. The Butterflies for Maddie Run, and a new event, the Tour de Farm will also be that morning. The Tour de Farm will begin at WKU Glasgow Campus and it will be a great opportunity for you to walk, jog, cycle, push your stroller, allow your kids to ride tricycles, in other words, a great opportunity to be outside on a short jaunt from WKU to the Glasgow Square. And when you get to the Square, BOTBFM will be open for the business of bringing fresh, healthy, local food to your table. There will also be celebratory speeches, including our Secretary of Agriculture, James Comer.
We also hope you will take a few minutes and view the short video above. What he has to say is right in line with the way we think about food and the opportunities for our local farmers to provide food that is simply better than anything you can get at a supermarket. Please take a few minutes to view it and then mark your calendars for these important dates in April.
We haven't posted here lately as most of our information is now being posted to the Sustainable Glasgow Facebook page at this link or our Bounty of the Barrens Farmers' Market Facebook page at this link , but it seems timely to make sure you know what is going on here as well. On the left side of this page are some important items about SG and the market for 2013.
The first link on the left takes you to the 2013 Vendor Application. If you want to join in on the fun of being a vendor at Bounty of the Barrens Farmers' Market in 2013, now is the time for you to download the application and fill it out and return it to us along with the appropriate fees. Opening day is April 27 and we have a real party planned for that day!
If you are interested in helping us fulfill the mission of Sustainable Glasgow, Inc., we are looking for financial support. There is another link on the left side of the page which takes you directly to our approved 2013 budget. As you can see, it takes a few dollars for us to do what we are doing in our efforts to make Glasgow an all-around cooler place to live. Can you or your firm step up and help us? Please give our budget a review and contact us if you want to be a part of our movement!
Now is the time for all fans of Sustainable Glasgow, and/or Bounty of the Barrens Farmers' Market, to get involved. On April 28 the center of our community will once again come alive with truly local commerce and camaraderie. The act of reinvigorating our local economy and reinforcing our ability to feed ourselves is not a spectator sport, it requires your active participation.
Many friends and colleagues have asked how they might help Sustainable Glasgow achieve its goals. Here is what we need. We need for you to show up on April 28 for the first day of Bounty of the Barrens Farmers' Market 2012. We need for you to talk some of your friends into showing up. You need to spread the word about the importance of getting healthier through eating locally. We need for you to help us walk our talk by voting with your fork and with your wallet. You can become a player in the movement that is bringing life back to our public square. You can be a soldier in our struggle to help those who want to create their own jobs and provide for our food security by farming the land that surrounds our home.
The Sustainable Glasgow team now begins its fourth year of experience at putting the market together. We have learned how to do this well, but putting the market together, giving local vendors a way to meet with local eaters, and giving local musicians a place to perform on crystal clear Saturday mornings, is not enough to allow us to declare victory. We only win when you and your friends become a part of the market by showing up and participating.
This year you will be greatly rewarded by becoming a part of the market. New vendors will be appearing this year, local artists will be displaying painting, sculpture, and other objects. Produce so fresh that it still has dew on it will be available for consumption less than ten miles from where it was grown. Local restaurants around the square will be open to serve you hot coffee and breakfast as part of your market day experience. There will be no better way for you to enjoy your life in Glasgow than by becoming a part of our Saturday mornings on the square.
Please help us keep this thing growing by bringing your friends. Introducing them to local food may well be the most thoughtful thing you can do for a friend!
It is just about that time again! The planning has been going on for months. Permissions have been sought and received. Vendors are gearing up for a bigger and better year. It looks like local food and crafts are going to be more available and even more important to our local economy in 2012 than ever before.
This Saturday will be the last "warm up" for the 2012 Bounty of the Barrens Market. Come to the Barren County Agricultural Extension Service office on West Main, just beyond the Dana Plant, on Saturday April 14 from 8:00 until noon, and you will get a chance to purchase early spring produce and talk with the BOTBFM vendors and the Sustainable Glasgow team about this year's version of the full market.
The BOTBFM will begin its 2012 run on the Glasgow Square on April 28, and will be there each Saturday thereafter through October. Josh Johnson will be managing the market and the music for us this year and we are all very excited about the reappearance of our established vendors and the appearance of some exciting new vendors to the BOTBFM family.
Hope to see you Saturday the 14th and each Saturday during the summer market run, commencing April 28 2012!
Everyone knows that Sustainable Glasgow is all about promoting the idea of living locally. While we have spent a lot of our time trying to get people to live local be eating local food, we also have other ideas and initiatives to promote local living. We are happy to provide you the details about the very latest one of those projects, The Last Waltz - Glasgow Style, our planned New Year's Eve celebration of local business and local musical talent.
On New Year's Eve, December 31, at George J's on the Glasgow Square, we want you to join us and your friends to celebrate the end of a fantastic year and the beginning of 2012. Sustainable Glasgow in cooperation with George J's and other local sponsors, is presenting this tribute to The Last Waltz with several local musicians playing and performing their versions of the music and the feeling of the movie, better described at this link. It should be a phenomenal evening and an opportunity to ring in the new year right here in Glasgow and keep your fun and your money local!
Tickets are $25 and seating is obviously limited. The plan it to start the evening with finger foods and snacks and listen to the music organized by Josh Johnson until midnight. Then the staff at George J's will serve you the first breakfast of 2012. It is our sincere hope that you will attend with your closest friends and start a new tradition centered around our life here in Glasgow. If you wonder just what sort of music this will be, check out this link. Contact us at localfirst@glasgow-ky.com for more information or to purchase tickets. We hope to see you there!
Yesterday we had our last outdoor version of Bounty of the Barrens Farmers’ Market for 2011, and even though we will continue to have the market on the second Saturdays of each month though the winter (at the Barren County Cooperative Extension Service office), it is time to pause and reflect on our third year of operating the market.
We have so many folks to thank. First of all, we continue to owe Debbie Livingston and the team at BB&T for allowing us to give birth to the market at their property and to continue to give us a place when other events prevent us from using the Glasgow Square. Of course, next we need to thank Judge Executive Davie Greer and the Barren County Fiscal Court for allowing us to move the market to the Barren County Courthouse lawn this year. That move was also facilitated by the approval of Mayor Rhonda Trautman and the Glasgow Police Department, and we are thankful for all of the confidence these folks have in us. I think all of us, including the local elected officials, are thrilled with the way the market has brought life back to the Square this year on Saturday mornings.
We are so lucky to have gotten so much support from the locals who made the market a required part of their Saturday mornings and for the new folks who discovered Glasgow and the Square and the unique qualities of our community through their attraction to the local food and the festive atmosphere created by Bounty of the Barrens Farmers’ Market on the Glasgow Square.
Of course, the festive atmosphere and the local food are things we owe to the farmers and craft people and local musical artists that gave of their time and talent for the twenty weeks of the outdoor market season. Their decision to employ themselves and their land in the work of feeding their neighbors is at the very core of the Sustainable Glasgow movement. Without them, we accomplish nothing.
We are still working to attract more local farmers and land holders into the local food economy that is represented by the market. We know that a sustainable local food economy begins and ends with local people willing to till the soil and work with the weather to firmly establish our region as one capable of producing food which can also be consumed by local folks. We have enough folks working the commodity crop business – we still need a lot more of them growing food that we can put on our tables right here in Glasgow such that our food system will serve us no matter what else happens in the business world outside of our region. The pursuit of this mission will continue to be at the very center of our efforts.
As this year’s outdoor market ends, the Sustainable Glasgow team begins its plans for next year, and beyond. We will be looking for ways to improve the market on the Square next year and we are always looking for more food vendors to set up shop there. Eventually, we hope our market evolves into a year-round indoor facility with a commercial kitchen and other features which will continue to move us toward a totally sustainable food economy. At the same time, we continue to lobby for improved pedestrian and cycling facilities in Glasgow as an alternative way to improve our transportation and health options in our town.
The Sustainable Glasgow movement is alive and growing and we know that is because of all of the folks who have made it a part of their life. We are thankful for all of the support we have gotten in our work and look forward to the many ways we can make our little corner of the world a better place for us all to live. Keep your eyes on our website and our Facebook page for exciting new developments, coming soon!
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