Expect a central location to grab your farm-fresh eggs, organic produce and baked goods when the indoor Riverhead Farmer’s Market returns to downtown Saturday, Nov. 14.
After expanding to two days per week last season, the market will once again only be open on Saturdays, according to Riverhead Business Improvement District Management Association president Ray Pickersgill. The weekly event will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. through the end of April.
“We’re going to make it a little longer because people were complaining [about the market shutting down before 2 p.m.],” he said. “I want to make it so everybody has a fair shot.”
It will be held at the former Swezey’s department store, located at 117 East Main Street in Riverhead — the same place it was held in winter 2014.
That building is owned by Riverhead Enterprise and has been vacant since the farmers’ market left.
Last year, the winter farmers’ market moved to the former McCabe’s/Dinosaur Walk Museum site, which wasn’t as centralized a location and not as successful, Pickersgill said.
A full list of vendors will be finalized within a week, but Pickersgill confirmed that organic poultry farm Browder’s Birds and Sang Lee Farms in Peconic will both be there.
“Most of the vendors that we had the first year will be in the market,” he said. “The applications are going out this week.”
Though attendance to the weekly event has fluctuated since it debuted in February 2014, it remains a strong draw for downtown as the only indoor winter farmers’ market on the East End.
Earlier this year, Pickersgill told the Riverhead Town Board that the BID would no longer operate a summer farmer’s market located along the Peconic Riverfront.
