Food conscious residents buy from Farmers Market

BY LAUREN EAKIN
Special to the Register & Bee
Published: August 16, 2008

The popularity of the Danville Farmers Market is reflective of a trend sweeping the nation. With tainted food scares and increased interest in knowing where what we eat comes from, Danville residents have benefited from what used to be a tiny curb market that sprung up in the 1920s adjacent to the tobacco warehouses.

A decade later, a permanent structure was built for the venue. Use of the structure as a market ceased in 1958, and the building lay vacant until Intermodal Surface Transportation Act grants made it possible its renovate in the late 1990s.

Dennis Forslund, a Los Angeles native, was hired to manage the still-nascent farmers market in 1995 for five hours a week. He had retired from a career in the military and took the part-time job at the urging of his wife, who he said wanted him to be busier.

The building at the Crossing of the Dan has 24,000 square feet of space. Vegetable, fruit and craft producers use 13,000 of that. Forslund has been at the current location since 1997.

Lifelong farmers and vocational growers show up each Saturday about an hour before opening time to set up their wares spread in a colorful display that seems endless.

Forslund said when he began working for the farmers market there were about six vendors.

There are now between 45-60 weekly vendors, he said, attracting about 2,000 customers each week. “It’s the size of a stampede,” Forslund said.

“People are getting a little more conscious of what they’re eating,” he said.

Per his requirements, everything sold at the market must be grown within 50 miles of Danville.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average vegetable travels 1,500 miles before it is sold.

The vegetables at the Danville Farmers Market have “more vegetrity,” Forslund said.

“And my meats — beef, pork and chicken — are all pasteurized-raised, with no antibiotics used,” he added.

The Danville Farmers Market, at the Crossing of the Dan, is open from 8 a.m. to noon on Saturdays. For more information, call (434) 797-7961.