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Moberly to add a fresh food farmers market

Farmers Market
Natalie Maynor

A new community farmer’s market is opening in Moberly. 

The Moberly Depot Park Market will open on May 1, and will be located in the old Wabash Station in downtown Moberly.

The market will operate from 3:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Thursdays, in rain or shine. Market Co-Manager Kim Ridgway said Thursdays were chosen to avoid scheduling conflicts with other farmer’s markets around the area.

Ridgway said that along with providing healthy food options, the market will also be helpful to downtown businesses.

“We’ll definitely benefit some of the small businesses that are downtown, and bring traffic to the downtown, and since some of the businesses have moved out of the downtown area, they are very excited about that,” she said.

While the main purpose of the market is to offer a vast variety of locally grown food, there will also be other events going on simultaneously. The market will offer local entertainment, family activities and product demonstrations that will be open to the general public.

This is not the first time that the city of Moberly has attempted to create a community farmer’s market, but up until this point, none of them still exists.

Janet Murray is the Market Liaison for the Randolph County Health Department. She said this new market will do better than past markets because of how well informed people are now.

“We’ve got a very, very enthusiastic marketing person now, and she has gone out of her way to speak to a number of different people and encourage them to come to the market,” Murray said, referring to Diane Richardson, the Executive Director of Main Street Moberly. This group is a non-profit whose goal is to further the appeal of downtown Moberly, and Richardson has been very involved with getting the farmer’s market more exposure.

“She has done 99% of the leg work on this,” Ridgway said. “If it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

Currently, 50 vendors have shown interest and Ridgway said that she expects to see around 22 in attendance on opening day.

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