Huddled in their coats and stomping their feet, Toledoans looking to escape yet more freezing temperatures can head to the Winter Farmers’ Market.
Running from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays at the 525 Market St. location only, the market is an enclosed, heated version of the local venue for farmers and other local businesses to sell their wares directly to consumers.
Over his first decade of helming the farmers’ market, Farmers’ Market Association of Toledo executive director Dan Madigan grew tired of spending most of the year galvanizing the community to visit the farmers’ market, only to lose momentum when it closed over the winter.
“I always kick myself for saying, ‘we ought to have a winter market,’ because I used to get every winter off,” Madigan said, chuckling.
Madigan looked to Ontario to see how they handled winter markets and found a robust system of greenhouses. In Toledo, vendors using hothouses on a smaller scale provide the produce that remains the market’s main draw, focusing on storage crops like beets, onions, carrots, and lettuce. Hot chocolate, craft vendors, and baked good delights build out a unique seasonal version of the weekly market.
The winter market “still has that same local community atmosphere,” said Lori Diver, who began working part-time for the Farmers’ Market Association after she joined the market with her company, Homestead Soaps.
Every week, Diver enjoys watching the energy shift from before the market opens until vendors wrap things up a few hours later.
At first, “everybody’s just working to get everything done, and then the bustling kind of creeps in, and it just keeps going higher until we open.”
For a few short hours, the busy crowd packs into the space, exploring the market’s wares before scattering their separate ways.
“It’s pretty cool to be part of that,” she said.
It took time to convince vendors to pare down their storage so they could squeeze into about a third of the space afforded to the market’s usual summer sprawl. Eleven years in, the Winter Market sees about 50 vendors to the summer market’s 60-70. This year, the Farmers’ Market Association invested in a more rigid plastic exterior to better keep the draft out.
Madigan estimates that the winter event reaches 25 percent to 30 percent of the summer attendance numbers, but that continued word of mouth is invaluable for keeping year-round interest high. Others rely on the produce the market provides.
Those receiving SNAP benefits can collect a dollar-for-dollar match of up to $25 each market day in Produce Perks tokens, which can be spent on fresh fruits and vegetables for no cost. The program is available all year long.
“We have a lot of regulars. People literally come every week, and it's just always nice to see them,” Diver said.
First Published February 15, 2025, 4:05 p.m.
