Bangor’s farmers market has expanded with five new vendors, including one that makes wood-fired pizza and another that sells homemade gelato and pasta.
The new vendors are Hart Farm, based in Holden and offering beef, pork, vegetables and flowers; L’Atelier, a Skowhegan father-daughter team selling pasta, prepared meals, gelato and other desserts; Star Fire Pizza, a mobile wood-fired pizza business; Avinash Rude, who will join in August with prepared Indian dishes; and Piper Mountain Christmas Trees, a Newburgh-based farm that sold balsam fir tree seedlings at the start of the summer season and will return later this year.
The vendors bring more diversity to the market, whose steering committee aims each year to fill gaps and introduce products that give customers a larger selection, said Billi Barker, who manages the market and operates the YumBus. The committee, with the help of the Maine Federation of Farmers’ Markets, decided to “recruit pretty heavily” this year after a few vendors scaled back, but growth is also happening through natural connections, she said.
For instance, Nettie Fox Farm convinced its neighbor, Piper Mountain, to join the market because “we think about how to have an edge in the winter,” and a product such as holiday wreaths entices people, Barker said. She has known Rude for several years through the market in Orono, so it will be nice to see him expand his reach, she said.
“It’s a win-win,” she said. “The vendors win because they get more exposure. The market wins because those vendors are offering more items and bringing their friends, family and followers.”
Twenty-five vendors are now part of the market, which runs from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. every Sunday from May through November in Abbot Square, across from the Bangor Public Library.
The attendance of some vendors fluctuates depending on when their products are in season, but five new ones are the most that have joined in a few years, Barker said.
As many as 15 vendors are involved in the winter, when the market goes from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. every first and third Sunday at Sea Dog Brewing Co. on Front Street. It lasts from December through April.
Joel Mason operated Star Fire Pizza as an itinerant catering business for about six years, but now he has a regular presence at Korean Dad, a restaurant incubator in Veazie, and the Bangor market, which he has attended twice this season with his partner and co-owner, Kathryn Grond.
“We’ve sold out both times,” he said. “We doubled our dough yesterday and still sold out. We’ve had a really great response.”
Being part of a market gives area vendors a chance to advertise their products, Mason said. If a customer enjoys his pizza, they might call when it comes time to plan a wedding or put on an appreciation event for employees.
More importantly, the couple want to feed people in a place where they can mingle and make meaningful connections. Bangor, where they collaborate and trade ingredients with fellow vendors, has proven to be a good setting for that. Mason said Star Fire uses basil from Hart Farm and garlic sauce from Dreamer Food, which is stationed at the Bangor waterfront and Korean Dad, on some of its pizzas.
Jesse and Molly Jimerson, who bought Piper Mountain in 2022, joined the market to get their wreaths to people in Bangor who might not otherwise travel to Newburgh. Market-goers were generally curious when they saw tree seedlings at the market in May and early June, and some were surprised to find “Christmas anything,” Jesse Jimerson said.
“We were thinking of marketing the seedlings for landscaping or just to grow your own Christmas tree, which is an experience,” he said. “The majority of what we do is try to give people an experience.”
The Jimersons will return to the market in November and December with wreaths, centerpieces and possibly tabletop trees.
